Why does the Old North State seem to be suffering the sudden onset of a provincial schizophrenia? The answer is not hidden but is largely unspoken

If you search out North Carolinas conservative heart, you might find it here: in Fayetteville at the Maxway, a discount shop.

Fayetteville is home to the sprawling Fort Bragg army base and consistently votes Republican. Maxway is owned by Art Pope, a conservative philanthropist who is arguably the most influential figure in state politics.

So, has the ongoing agony over bathrooms thrown the customers and employees of Maxway into confusion?

Oh, goodness. Well, we do have two bathrooms, said Camelia Taylor, the store manager. But one is marked for either men or women. The other is for employees, but we pretty much let anyone use it.

Thats a typical response among North Carolinians. Life among the sinks and stalls of the state has carried on unchanged, in actual practice. Transgender people arent attacking children. Citizens arent rising up with torches and pitchforks.

Theory is another matter, though. Politicians in the Old North State are describing to their constituents a theory of bathroom chaos that seems entirely uncoupled from both the practice and the attitudes of most people.

Along the way, North Carolinas reputation as the souths progressive, intellectual capital has started to circle the drain. It has become a symbol of intolerance, it faces a court battle with the federal government, and it has exemplified that most un-southern quality: tawdriness.

So North Carolina seems to be suffering the sudden onset of a provincial schizophrenia.

Why?

The answer is not hidden but has gone largely unspoken. The conflict is to a great extent the doing of two powerful and opposing politicians, stuck in a machiavellian duel. It reveals a great deal about North Carolina. And just as much, possibly, about what lies ahead for the entire United States.

The path to the Great Bathroom Emergency of 2016 started eight years ago, when Barack Obama won North Carolinas presidential vote by a .4% margin.

It was a slim victory, but thunderous.

In the previous election North Carolina had voted for George W Bush by 12 points, said Michael Bitzer, a professor at Catawba College and one of the states foremost political scientists.

Obamas campaign tactics grassroots fundraising, micro-targeted marketing caught Republicans flat-footed. This was still the party of Jesse Helms, Bitzer said. Helms was a five-term senator who waged a notorious fight against the civil rights movement. People were completely astonished here.

In the resultant Tea party insurgency of 2010, the far right seized control of North Carolinas senate and house for the first time since the Reconstruction. So after the 2010 census Republicans controlled the once-a-decade redrawing of political districts and packed liberal voters into a small number of densely populated districts. They sacrificed the urban areas and consolidated power in rural districts.

North Carolina was, and still is, a purple state. But overnight it transformed from a state of purple counties to a state with blue urban islands in a sea of red.

Any areas of real competitiveness are shrinking, Bitzer said. The field has become so polarized that elections are forgone things; if a candidate has no chance of winning a county, why even bother visiting? Thats now the case in 85% of the states districts, according to Bitzers analysis. The two sides have stopped talking to each other.

Its a trajectory that mirrors the United States as a whole. Rural and urban, left and right, entrenched parties and ideological isolation.

All of which means that North Carolinas upcoming gubernatorial race may be the tightest in the nation. The main contenders are the Republican incumbent, Pat McCrory, and his Democratic attorney general, Roy Cooper.

Both men rose to power as moderates but found themselves scrambling for a way to appeal to their base constituencies: rural conservatives for McCrory and urban liberals for Cooper.

Then came the flush heard round the world.

It wasnt supposed to go this far.

Nobody was licking his chops for this, as one Republican leader put it.

In press conferences McCrory has appeared mystified by the worlds reaction, and has said as much. The majority of the citizens in our great state, and this governor, did not seek out this issue, he recently told a bank of television cameras.

The conflict first arose in Charlotte, the states financial center, where in March the city council passed an ordinance that transgender people may use the bathroom according to the gender with which they identify.

In an emergency session the state legislators overturned the ordinance. They hastily passed House Bill 2, which bans cities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances that protect gay and transgender people in any way, bathrooms or otherwise.

The move brought a crush of global attention. Giant companies Google, Apple, Disney struck out at the law and pledged to pull back their businesses if the law wasnt repealed.

Then this week the federal government weighed in, when US attorney general Loretta Lynch called HB2 state-sponsored discrimination and filed suit. North Carolina responded by filing its own suit.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/14/north-carolina-bathroom-bill-hb2-transgender-rights

Tokyo 2020 bid committee has admitted making payments of $2m to an account linked to son of disgraced former IAAF chief Lamine Diack but says they were above-board consultancy fees

The Tokyo 2020 bid committee has admitted making payments of more than $2m to an account linked to the son of the disgraced former world athletics chief Lamine Diack but insisted they were above-board consultancy fees.

The former president of the Tokyo bid committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, and its former director general, Nobumoto Higuchi, broke their silence to admit the payments had been made in two tranches, either side of its victory, but insisted the campaign was at all times fair and correct.

The Guardian revealed earlier this week that the seven-figure payments were made to an account overseen by Ian Tan Tong Han, a consultant to Athletic Management & Services, a company based in Lucerne that has a contract with the Japanese marketing giant Dentsu to service its long-standing International Association of Athletics Federations contract. Tan was closely linked to Papa Massata Diack, the former IAAF marketing consultant who is the subject of an Interpol wanted notice over his involvement in separate corruption charges linked to extortion and bribery, though he denies all the allegations, including those that led to the life ban from athletics imposed in December.

French prosecutors confirmed a day after news of the payments broke that they were examining possible bribery and money laundering charges related to the case. Opposition parties in Japan summoned government officials to answer questions over the affair. During the meeting members of the Japanese Olympic Committee read out the statement.

Takeda, who is now president of the Japanese Olympic Committee and is head of the International Olympic Committees marketing commission, said the payment to the Black Tidings account was a legitimate consultants fee.

He and Higuchi said in a statement: The payments mentioned in the media were a legitimate consultants fee paid to the service we received from Mr Tans company. It followed a full and proper contract and the monies were fully audited.

The Tokyo 2020 bid committee can confirm that it paid an amount for the professional services received for the following consultation work including: the planning of the bid; tutoring on presentation practice; advice for international lobbying communications; and services for information and media analysis. All these services were properly contracted using accepted business practices.

When first approached by the Guardian the Japanese Olympic Committee said it could not respond because its press team was away on business.

The statement continued: The firm contracted for this work had good credentials and references and were experts on Asian and Arabic and we were fully satisfied with the service we received from them. Furthermore, the amounts paid were in our opinion proper and adequate for the services provided and gave no cause for suspicion at the time.

This message was conveyed to the International Olympic Committee when these allegations first surfaced after a request for information from the IOC.Diacks father, Lamine, who was also an IOC member between 1999 and 2013, resigned as president of the IAAF in November last year following allegations about his role in the Russian doping scandal.

The French prosecutor said the discovery of the payments and their proximity to the decision to award the Games to Tokyo ahead of Madrid and Istanbul in September 2013, together with important findings about parallel purchases made in Paris by Black Tidings, justified the opening of a formal investigation.

It said it opened the investigation on 24 December last year into allegations of active bribery, passive bribery, aggravated money laundering, concealment committed by an organised gang and participation in a criminal conspiracy by unnamed persons.

It was an independent report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency that alleged that the Black Tidings account to was overseen by Tan.

In December Papa Massata Diack was banned for life by the IAAF ethics commission, but is appealing to the court of arbitration for sport.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/13/tokyo-2020-bid-2m-papa-massata-diack-iaaf

You’ve had an active day, eaten right, taken a bath, donned your favorite PJs, and banished your phone and other screens from your bedroom — just like experts say to do for optimal sleep. But you’re still tossing and turning.

Turns out, your mattress may be to blame.

“The sleep surface is critical to sleep quality, and unfortunately is too often overlooked,” Terry Cralle, a certified clinical sleep educator and author of Sleeping Your Way To The Top, told The Huffington Post. Too many people reach for sleeping pills or an over-the-counter sleep aid without even considering what they are sleeping on, she said.

One study published in Applied Ergonomics found that new bedding systems improved measures of pain, stiffness, sleep comfort and quality across the board in a group of 62 men and women compared with their old beds, which on average were more than nine years old.

Want to know more? Here’s a five-point guide to picking out a new mattress:  

1. Know when it’s time.

It’s time to buy new “when you sleep better away from home (in a hotel room or elsewhere), or if you prefer to sleep on your recliner or sofa,” Cralle said. Additional signs your mattress needs replacing include waking up with aches or pains, not feeling as refreshed in the morning or waking up in the night because you’re too hot or restless, she said.

Worn or sagging spots in the middle of your mattress or at the edges are physical signs your mattress has seen better days, according to recommendations from the National Sleep Foundation — and you should be able to sleep undisturbed on your side of the bed if your partner rolls over or gets up in the middle of the night. Though there is no hard and fast rule on how long to keep a mattress, most have a lifespan of about eight years, according to the NSF.

Cralle suggested evaluating how well your mattress is meeting your sleep needs after about seven years, or if you’ve had an injury or illness, a significant weight change or a new bed partner: “You may have forgotten how good a new comfortable mattress can feel.”

2. Understand what your mattress needs are.

In addition to everybody having their own body type and sleep needs, our bodies and those needs change over time. A mattress that was comfortable when we were 35 will not be as comfortable at 45, Cralle said. Factors like pain, weight loss, weight gain, and chronic disease can all affect our sleep preferences.

“The mattress that is comfortable for a 98-pound woman with arthritis may not be comfortable for a 250-pound man who sleeps hot,” she pointed out. 

The mattress that is comfortable for a 98-pound woman with arthritis may not be comfortable for a 250-pound man who sleeps hot. Terry Cralle, a certified clinical sleep educator and author of Sleeping Your Way To The Top

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2016/05/09/how-to-buy-a-new-mattress-what-to-know_n_9948196.html