An arms manufacturer will pay $630,000 in back wages and interest after federal officials said the company discriminated against Black applicants and women applicants in Mississippi.
Olin Corporation is a contractor for the Air Force and other federal agencies, the Department of Labor said in an Oct. 23 news release.
Federal officials said the company discriminated against 286 applicants for adjuster II positions at a facility in Oxford, Mississippi, over the course of two years.
Now, it’ll pay the $630,000 as part of a conciliation agreement the company reached with labor officials, the department said.
The company did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.
As part of the agreement, the company will extend job offers to 46 affected applicants as positions become available, and it will review its hiring policies to ensure they do not discriminate against any applicants, according to the Labor Department.
The company is accused of violating an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from “discriminating in employment based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin”, according to federal officials. The applicants applied to positions from December 2017 to December 2019.
Olin Corporation, based in Clayton, Missouri, is a leading small arms and ammunition producer that employs 8,000 employees in over 20 countries, according to the company’s website.
“Federal contractors must ensure there is no discrimination in their employment practices,” Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs southeast regional director Aida Collins said in the release.
Oxford is in northern Mississippi about 80 miles southeast of Memphis, Tennessee.
This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
North Korea said Tuesday it “accurately” launched a spy satellite into orbit, drawing a strong rebuke from the United States, which called the launch a threat to “stability and prosperity on the Korean peninsula.”
The launch follows the South Korean military’s warning on Monday that it detected new activities from the North which appeared to be signs for a satellite launch.
“North Korea launched what it claims to be a military reconnaissance satellite in a southern direction,” South Korea’s Joint Chief of Staff said in a statement late Tuesday.
The JSC has yet to provide details, including whether the test was successful, the location of the launch, or any flight data related to the launch.
However, Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency claimed that the satellite was successfully launched into orbit.
“‘Chollima-1’ flew normally along the scheduled flight trajectory and accurately entered the reconnaissance satellite ‘Wangli-1’ into orbit at 22:54:13, 705 seconds after launch,” KCNA said.
“The launch of a reconnaissance satellite is [North Korea’s] legal right to strengthen its right to self-defense and will greatly contribute to firmly enhancing the war readiness of the Republic’s armed forces in line with the safety environment created in the country and surrounding areas due to the enemy’s dangerous military maneuvers,” the news agency said.
American condemnation
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States could not verify KCNA’s claim but condemned the launch as dangerous.
“I cannot confirm that assessment. It is still something that’s ongoing inside the United States government,” Miller said, before declining to comment on the security implications of Pyongyang possessing such a spy satellite.
“I can say that we condemn the DPRK’s unlawful launch of a military reconnaissance satellite today,” he added, saying it “violates multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions” by using ballistic missiles and “undermines stability and prosperity on the Korean peninsula.”
Rocket technology can be used for both launching satellites and missiles. For that reason, the U.N. bans North Korea from launching a ballistic rocket, even if it claims to be a satellite launch.
In August, North Korea failed for the second time to launch a satellite, three months after an unsuccessful first attempt.
South’s warnings
On Monday, the JCS’s chief director of operations, Kang Ho-pil, strongly urged North Korea to cease the launch, vowing that Seoul would take the necessary counter measures.
South Korea is most likely to suspend the effectiveness of the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, a military source, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Radio Free Asia late Tuesday. The person did not elaborate.
The two Koreas have agreed to halt what the other has defined as hostile actions toward one another near the border, but the North has conducted a number of provocations, violating the agreement. Critics in South Korea, thus, have long argued that the deal has already become ineffective, only serving to restrict Seoul’s operational and surveillance capabilities.
South Korea’s defense minister Shin Won-sik told reporters last month that the agreement has limited the South’s surveillance capability against North Korean provocations.
North Korea has been solidifying its ties with Russia, and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said earlier this month that it is likely to have received help in obtaining satellite launch technology from Moscow.
The launch comes as South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol is in London for his state visit to the United Kingdom, where he pledged to advance Seoul’s security ties with London.
North Korea has a history of provocations when South Korean presidents are abroad, seemingly to challenge Seoul’s response capabilities and the efficiency of its systems in the president’s absence.
A United States soldier, her husband, and her two children were found dead in their residence at Fort Stewart in Georgia last Wednesday. Army officials have indicated that the the cause of the soldier and her family’s deaths was “domestic in nature.”
After initially withholding the names of the soldier and her family, Fort Stewart Hunter Army Airfield posted an update on social media identifying the names of the deceased individuals. According to the Army, Staff Sgt. Meiziaha T. Cooper and her husband Desmond Cooper were found dead alongside their 4-year old and 9-year old children at their Fort Stewart residence.
According to Stars and Stripes, military police at Fort Stewart were sent to check on the family Wednesday around 2 p.m., when they found all four family members unresponsive. The soldier and her family were later pronounced dead around 5:30 p.m.
“Fort Stewart law enforcement is on the scene of an incident in on-post housing,” military officials wrote in a statement. “The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division is aware of and investigating this incident. There is no reason to believe that there is an extended threat to our community.”
READ MORE: Army veteran threatens to kill US soldiers
Fort Stewart officials explained that Cooper first joined the Army in October of 2012 and served as a culinary noncommissioned officer. Throughout her military service, Cooper received six Army Achievement Medals and four Army Commendation Medals.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Staff Sgt. Cooper’s family, friends and teammates during this very difficult and tragic time,” 3rd Infantry Division Deputy Commander of Operations, Col. Jeremy S. Wilson, said. “Our community has been shaken by this unspeakable tragedy and out of respect to the family, we ask for privacy to grieve this loss.”
Fort Stewart officials noted that the “initial findings” of the investigation into the death of Cooper and her family indicated that the incident was “domestic in nature.” However, Army officials explained that additional information regarding the incident would not be provided as the investigation remains “ongoing.”
According to Stars and Stripes, Fort Stewart is located outside Hinesville, Georgia, which is roughly 40 miles from Savannah. Fort Stewart houses the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and serves as the largest military base east of the Mississippi River.
Thirteen years after a kayaker reported stepping into a stinging patch of muck in the Congaree River, contractors have cleaned up the toxic mess that covered a stretch of the river bottom below the Gervais Street bridge in Columbia.
Work crews excavated and removed some 38,500 tons of coal tar from two sections of riverbed between the Gervais and Blossom Street bridges in what has been one of the largest environmental cleanup projects in Columbia’s recent history.
A coffer dam was built on two sections of the Congaree River to make it easier for workers to clean up toxic coal tar that drained into the river from a power company plant. (Tracy Glantz/The State/TNS)
The $20 million Congaree cleanup effort was pronounced officially complete during a public event along the river Monday that featured Gov. Henry McMaster, Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann and Keller Kissam, Dominion Energy’s South Carolina president.
Officials said the cleanup work, underway for more than a year, finished about a year ahead of schedule.
“There were many who doubted that it could be done, but I’m here today to say proudly that not only did our exceptionally talented and dedicated team do it, they did it in a manner that sets an example for others to follow,’’ Kissam said in a prepared statement.
McMaster, who took a personal interest in the cleanup effort, told the crowd gathered at the river that having to clean up the Congaree shows why it is important to protect the environment. The coal tar is believed to have drained into the river from an old manufactured gas plant, which operated on Huger Street from around the turn of the 20th century to the 1950s.
Coal tar has cleanup on the Congaree River. Gov. Henry McMaster visited the river with Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann after a public event Nov. 13, 2023. (Tracy Glantz/The State/TNS)
“There’s a lesson in here: That it’s easy to mess things up, but it’s hard to clean up,’’ McMaster said. ‘’Here we are cleaning up something that was done probably inadvertently without thinking. Everything went into the river back way back then.’’
“We have to be sure now that what we are doing is not messing something up so somebody has to clean it up later.’’
With the work completed, Rickenmann said plans to develop parts of the river can move more smoothly. Columbia leaders have long envisioned having a riverfront park near where the cleanup occurred.
The city also wants to expand the system of trails along the area’s rivers and plans are on the table to open Williams Street, which runs parallel to the Congaree between Gervais and Blossom streets.
Gov. Henry McMaster speaks during a Nov. 13, 2023 public event to announce the completion of an environmental cleanup of the Congaree River in Columbia. Tons of toxic coal tar were removed from the river. (Tracy Glantz/The State/TNS)
“Opening up the river and the connectivity is something we have talked about for so long,’’ Rickenmann said. “This riverfront is really ….. the catalyst for Columbia.’’
Perhaps more importantly, the cleanup makes it safer for swimmers and kayakers below the Gervais Street bridge. The area near the end of Senate Street has historically been a popular spot to launch watercraft.
Dominion contractors dug up the material and hauled it away after building two temporary dams to hold back water in parts of the river. The dams, highly visible in Columbia during the cleanup, have now been removed and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control says the project was a success.
Work done in the river occurred on about three acres that contained the vast majority of the coal tar, which was located in two spots where the public might most be likely to have come in contact with it. A small amount of coal tar was left in other, less accessible parts of the river, according to Dominion. Overall, the coal tar was scattered over an 11-to-14-acre area.
Dominion’s Tom Effinger said the muck dug from the river bottom was hauled to a landfill on Screaming Eagle Road in Richland County for disposal.
During the cleanup, more than coal tar was removed. Work crews pulled out 2.5 tons of trash and debris, such as tires, Kissam said.
Contractors also found more than 100 Civil War era relics, including a wagon wheel, a Confederate saber, cannon balls and an anchor. Some of the Civil War era relics were believed to have wound up in the river during the time of Union General William Sherman’s assault on Columbia in 1865.
Hundreds of other artifacts were recovered from other eras, including from when Native Americans lived in the area.
Work crews found at least one unexploded bomb that was from an era after the Civil War. A special military bomb crew hauled it off. To protect workers, armor-plated heavy equipment was used to dig through the mud, Kissam said.
The cleanup work started in May 2022 after years of disagreements on whether to remove the tar or cover it up with rocks and leave the material in place.
SCE&G, later acquired by Dominion, had initially considered cleaning up the tar in the face of pressure from DHEC. But the company then changed its mind after saying cleaning up the tar would be a difficult, expensive process.
Leaving the tar in place and covering it up with stones and fabric would have saved the company $11 million at the time. SCE&G said it was having trouble getting environmental permits for the work, which is why it opted for leaving the material.
Critics said, however, that it was the company’s responsibility to get the tar out of the river since the pollution had drained from the manufactured gas plant site on Huger Street.
Then, after the Congaree Riverkeeper organization threatened a pair of lawsuits, Dominion restarted efforts to cleanse the river bottom of coal tar. The power company restarted the project and got the permits it needed.
Once the cleanup work finally began in May 2022, it went smoothly, officials said.
Coal tar is a goopy black substance generated from the 1800s to the 1950s at manufactured gas plants that produced energy. It is filled with toxins, including cancer causing benzene and substances that can cause tumors on fish.
Nationally, an estimated 5,000 coal tar sites exist across the country, including spots in other parts of South Carolina, besides the Congaree River.
In 2010, a kayaker notified DHEC that he had stepped in the substance, prompting the agency to post public warning signs along parts of the river. Other people, including riverkeeper Bill Stangler, also came in contact with the burning muck.
Stangler, the riverkeeper for the Congaree, Broad and lower Saluda rivers, said the coal tar cleanup took a lot of effort on the part of his organization, state regulators and local politicians. Had people not pushed the power company to restart the cleanup, it may never have been done, said Stangler, who said he was not invited to Monday’s public event along the river.
“We’ve been advocating on this for more than a decade, ever since a local river user stepped in that tar,’’ Stangler said. “It took a lot of work to get there. It was contentious at times, but we are happy to see this project get done.
“It sends a signal to our community and communities across the country that if you stand up and speak and fight for your rivers, great things can happen.’’
U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville said that Democrats and President Joe Biden “created” the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Tuberville made the remarks during an interview with Newsmax’s Bianca de la Garza in response to questioning about Democratic efforts to implement a resolution which would allow them to circumvent Tuberville’s efforts to stonewall more than 300 military promotions, a tactic he has employed since February in protest over the Department of Defense’s abortion policy.
“They need to be worried about what’s going on in Ukraine, the Middle East, the wars that their side, the Democrats and Joe Biden, have created but you know, they want to circumvent the rules in the Senate,” Tuberville told de la Garza.
A request for comment or clarification from Tuberville’s office did not receive an immediate response Saturday.
Democrats are crafting a resolution to allow most of the military nominees to be voted on with a single vote, Punchbowl News reported Thursday. Under current Senate rules, each nomination has to be voted on individually, which Democrats said would take months.
Tuberville has held up military promotions over the DoD policy which allows female servicemembers to be reimbursed for travel expenses for out-of-state abortions. Tuberville said during the interview holding the promotions hostage signals to Democrats “I mean business when it comes to abortion in the military.”
Tuberville also said he wants the American people to vote on the DoD’s abortion policy and, were it to pass, “we do what the American people elect to do.”
“But, you know, they’re playing dictator from the White House,” he told de la Garza. “This administration, Bianca, has screwed everything up in our country. They’ve screwed up everything up all over the world since they’ve been in. It’s a disaster.”
Elon Musk’s X began offering new subscription tiers for users on Friday in an attempt to shore up revenue at the social media company.
Subscribers have the option of paying $3 a month for the basic tier, which provides features such as the ability to edit posts and upload longer videos, according to the company formerly known as Twitter Inc.
Web users can opt to pay $8 a month for the premium tier or $16 a month for premium+, to get additional benefits including the blue check mark, ad revenue sharing and fewer or no ads in their timelines. Users subscribing through Apple Inc.’s iOS and the Android platform will pay more.
Since Musk bought the company a year ago, X has shifted away from advertising and toward paid subscriptions. A new analysis from independent researcher Travis Brown estimated that 950,000 to 1.2 million people now pay for X’s $8 monthly premium service.
A California man kept his mother’s death hidden and her bank account open for more than 30 years — when he stole $830,000 in government benefits paid to her, federal prosecutors said.
In 1990, after his mother’s terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis, the now 65-year-old Poway man “methodically laid a foundation” for his fraud scheme that went undetected for 32 years, prosecutors wrote in court documents.
“As far as the United States is aware, Defendant’s crime is the largest financial loss that the United States Government has suffered in any individual deceased beneficiary case that has been federally prosecuted,” prosecutors wrote in his sentencing memo.
The man’s mother died in Japan on Oct. 22, 1990, court documents say. Afterward, he went on to steal her benefits from November 1990 until September 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.
The benefits included his mother’s Social Security Administration widow’s pension and an annuity from the Department of Defense, which pays annuities to “eligible survivors” of retired or active duty military members who have died, prosecutors said.
Since the man never alerted the SSA or the Defense Department of his mother’s death, the agencies continued paying her benefits, according to prosecutors. The man is accused of forging her signature on eligibility documents to keep the payments coming and forging income taxes.
When federal agents confronted the man about the fraud in June 2022, he lied — telling them “his mother was alive in Japan” — and continued to steal her benefits for about three more months, a sentencing memorandum says.
Now, a judge has sentenced the man to two years in federal prison, the attorney’s office announced in an Oct. 27 news release.
This comes after the man pleaded guilty to money laundering and Social Security fraud on June 27, McClatchy News previously reported.
McClatchy News contacted the man’s defense attorney for comment on Oct. 30 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
Man now owes $850,000 and must give up home
As part of the man’s sentencing, the man was ordered to pay $858,876.28 in restitution, the release said.
He must also give up $830,000 in assets, including his home in Poway, which was originally his mother’s home, according to the sentencing memo.
According to a Zillow estimate, the 1,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bathroom home is valued at just under $850,000.
In a sentencing memo submitted on the man’s behalf, his attorney, Knut S. Johnson, wrote that his client was diagnosed with “mental illness” in the 1970s, resulting in him becoming bankrupt and unable to remain employed after his mother died.
“This is not the case of a person who stole $800,000.00 and bought frivolous items — it is the case of a mentally ill man unable to care for himself who could not leave his childhood home and so continued to receive her modest retirement checks,” Knut wrote.
Knut said his client received about $25,000 in his mother’s benefits each year while “his mental health declined” and “so did the condition of his childhood home.”
Meanwhile, prosecutors described the man as methodical in his scheme in their sentencing memo.
In addition to stealing his mother’s benefits, the man also used her identity to open credit accounts in her name with at least nine different banks, prosecutors said.
This caused a loss of over $28,000, according to the release.
The “defendant’s fraud and concealment of his mother’s death resulted in a financial windfall beyond his wildest dreams: more than $800,000 in stolen public money, and access to credit that he could never have obtained in his own right,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is unlikely to have the capability to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan by 2027, according to a top Taiwanese security official, casting doubts on the progress of Beijing’s military modernization plans.
Taiwan will continue to delay the People’s Liberation Army’s invasion timetable by strengthening its defense capabilities, Wellington Koo, the head of the island’s National Security Council, said Monday at a briefing in Taipei.
“I don’t think it will happen in the near future or at least within one to two years,” Koo said of a Chinese invasion. “If China needs to carry out amphibious landing operations to take Taiwan, I don’t think it will have such capabilities by 2027.”
Koo declined to pinpoint when an attack could happen, saying only that the island that China claims as its own doesn’t see Beijing making invasion preparations. Beijing is already facing uncertainty next year from its own economic downturn, while the world must also deal with the U.S. election, and wars in Europe and the Middle East, he added.
Xi is seeking to build a “world-class force” by 2027, a deadline that coincides with the 100th anniversary of the PLA. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last year Beijing’s military won’t be ready to invade Taiwan for “some time.” His successor, Charles Q. Brown Jr., said last week he doubts Beijing plans to try to take Taiwan militarily.
Taiwan is separated from China by more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) of ocean, and its rugged coastline would make an amphibious invasion challenging. While China has the world’s largest navy by number of warships, its forces are largely untested.
Koo said Taiwan would use mobile weapons such as anti-ship missiles, HIMARS rocket systems, drones and Javelin anti-tank systems to make China’s landing operations more difficult in the event of an invasion. The U.S. will bring forward a HIMARS shipment by one year to 2026.
Earlier this month, Koo said the U.S. government is taking steps to speed up the delivery of American weapons systems to Taiwan that have been delayed by factors including shipments to Ukraine.
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to touch on Taiwan when he meets with Xi this week at a leaders’ summit in San Francisco. Biden has repeatedly vowed to defend Taiwan from any Chinese invasion, in comments that have angered Beijing and brought new uncertainty to Washington’s longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” over the island.
Koo said Taipei and the U.S. are discussing a possible meeting between Biden and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. founder Morris Chang at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where he is Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s special envoy. At last year’s conference, Chang had a brief chat with Xi that didn’t touch on Taiwan Strait tensions.
Taiwan’s security cooperation with the U.S. remains close, he said, with Washington pushing Taipei on defense reform, whole-society resilience and the construction of asymmetric warfare capabilities.
“The U.S. has a stronger sense of urgency than Taiwan,” Koo said.
A deal for Hamas to release hostages taken during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel may be the closest yet and would require a multiday pause in the fighting in Gaza, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer said.
“We are closer than we have been in quite some time, maybe closer than we have been since the beginning of this process to getting this deal done,” Finer said Sunday in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. Negotiations “have clearly reached a very sensitive stage” after “significant progress” in recent days and hours, he said on ABC’s This Week.
“We think it is possible, but it’s not done yet,” Finer told NBC. A prisoner exchange involving Israel is among the topics being discussed, he said.
President Joe Biden has backed Israel in opposing a cease-fire with Hamas, which rules Gaza and has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and the European Union. In contrast, a pause lasting multiple days would be necessary to allow hostages to be safely moved out of the battlefield, Finer said.
“We’re talking about pausing the fighting for a few days so we can get the hostages out,” Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the US, told ABC. While Israel’s military operation to dismantle Hamas won’t stop, “we are willing to go for a pause for a significant number of hostages if we have a deal,” he said.
A pause would have the added benefit of allowing stepped-up humanitarian aid to Gaza residents, Finer said on NBC.
“Having a deal that causes a pause in the fighting would make it easier to get more in faster,” he said.
With Israel potentially expanding combat operations into southern Gaza, the U.S.’s position remains that the Israeli military has a right to pursue Hamas’s leadership while urging Israel to avoid civilian casualties, Finer said.
“There is a real concern because hundreds of thousands of residents of Gaza have fled now from the north to the south at Israel’s request,” Finer said in an interview to air on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“We think that their operation should not go forward until those people, those additional civilians, have been accounted for in their military planning,” he said. “So we will be conveying that directly to them and have been directly conveying that to them.”
Qatar has been mediating in hostage talks with Hamas, which the U.S. and the European Union have designated a terrorist organization.
A spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council said late Saturday there was no deal yet after the Washington Post reported that Israel and Hamas had arrived at a tentative, US-brokered hostage agreement.
Finer said the administration is fleshing out Biden’s warning on Saturday that “extremist” settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank risk being banned from obtaining US visas.
“We’re moving in that direction, and we’ll have more to say about that, I’m sure, in the coming days,” Finer said on CBS.
Between cocktail parties after work, making cookies with the grandkids and the never-ending holiday get-togethers, it can feel like the season is built for overindulging.
For those with dietary restrictions, the holidays can be tough. You don’t want simply to avoid everything that isn’t included in your diet, missing out on family traditions and feeling stuck on the sidelines. But at the same time, you don’t want to throw caution to the wind and eat everything you want either.
“We have food-related celebrations and connections, and sometimes eating a little more than you normally would is a fun part of celebrating,” Rachael Hartley, RD, the owner of Rachael Hartley Nutrition and author of “Gentle Nutrition” told Everyday Health.
Here are four tips to help you be more mindful of what you’re eating and to steer a middle course between abstinence and gluttony during the holidays.
Eat more greens
Add a few more greens to your plate — no, that doesn’t include creamed spinach — to boost fiber. It will not only keep you filling fuller longer, but will also aid in digestion.
Opt for a side salad packed with dark leafy greens like kale. According to Eat Well, “their fiber and water content helps greens fill you up and keep you feeling full, longer-which can help you lose weight.”
Prepare for the stress
It’s one thing to overindulge because you’re in a celebratory mood. But it’s a different thing all together if you’re using food as a coping mechanism. If you get sad or stressed during this time of year, knowing and understanding how you might use food to cope is important not just for your relationship with food, but also your relationship with the holidays in general.
“To avoid emotional food choices, set boundaries with yourself and others to limit distress. These can either be proactive, meaning planned in advance, or reactive, such as a reaction to a situation,” advised Life Span. “To start, say ‘no’ to events or invitations that are less important to you. This proactive approach allows you to prioritize the gatherings that are most meaningful.”
Indulge outside the holiday season
Allowing yourself to eat certain foods throughout the year — or even a few months before the holidays — can help keep you on track. Introducing those foods you can’t say “no” to in advance will lessen the cravings and the need to have them in bulk during the holiday season.
“Indulging in the moment isn’t necessarily a ‘bad’ thing, and if we break the power of ‘bad,’ then we break the power of guilt. And when we break the power of guilt, we change the way we feel about ourselves,” noted Women’s Running.
Stick to a schedule
Most holiday meals require cooks to stay on schedule — deciding what gets prepped the night before, the exact time the turkey needs to go in the over, etc. You should stick to your schedule too. If you normally eat certain meals at certain times, keep doing that. Avoid things like skipping lunch to leave “more room” for the big meal.
“We make more informed decisions about what to eat when we aren’t uncomfortably hungry,” added Hartley.
