Roald Dahl's Imaginormous Challenge Announces Five NEW Lucky Golden Ticket Winners!

6 year old Imaginormous Winner, Giselle Decker, enjoying her unicorns at Dylan's Candy Bar

This summer, for the first time since Charlie Bucket won the prize of a lifetime, Penguin Young Readers, along with some of Mr. Wonka's most trusted advisors, has chosen five children from across the United States to become the 5 NEW lucky golden ticket winners!

Roald Dahl's Imaginormous Challenge, which recently concluded its first year, received over 20,000 imaginative story ideas from American kids aged 5-12 across the U.S.—a  record breaking entry level! 

This past weekend, three of the children experienced once in a lifetime opportunities to work with incredible partners to transform their 100 word story ideas into something that would make Willy Wonka proud. 

From the youngest winner, Giselle Decker, at just 6 years of age, who imagined a unicorn kitty named Bubblegum and had her story idea transformed into a 3D printed, edible candy, to Anusha Senapati, an 11-year-old whose idea about a paralyzed girl who longs to dance was transformed by the cast and crew of "Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" on Broadway into a choreographed dance number, each winner had the opportunity to work with industry leaders to help them realize their full creative potential.

Eleven-year-old Imaginormous winner Lucy Franks said of getting the chance to work with New York Times bestselling author Adam Gidwitz: "It was a once in a lifetime experience to be able to work with Adam Gidwitz, an author whose books I've read and enjoyed. He helped me develop my story and I left the session with some wonderful ideas. I can't wait to complete and share my story."

The final two winners' experiences are currently in the works: eight-year-old Sage Marie Spaeth will fly out to Hollywood to visit Warner Bros. Animation for her winning experience at the end of August, and eleven-year-old Cole Ritchie's winning idea is currently being transformed into a playable Minecraft experience, which will be available in a few weeks.

The full line up of Golden Ticket winners and their Imaginormous experiences are:

1.    Theatrical Creation Winner: Anusha Senapati, Age 11, Hometown: Acton, MA    

 "Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" on Broadway turned Anusha's winning story idea into a marvelous, theatrical creation.

2.    Hollywood Pitch Winner: Sage Marie Spaeth, Age 8, Hometown: Teaneck, NJ

Sage and her family will fly out to Hollywood, courtesy of Mr. Wonka, and pitch her story idea to a major Hollywood Executive at Warner Bros. Animation!

3.    Immersive Minecraft World Winner: Cole Ritchie, Age 11, Hometown: Heber City, Utah

A team of Minecraft builders are transforming and reimagining Cole's winning story idea into a playable Minecraft experience for Cole and the world to enjoy.

4.      Become an Author Winner: Lucy Franks, Age 11, Hometown: Sparta, NJ

New York Times bestselling, award winning author Adam Gidwitz (A Tale Dark and Grimm, The Inquisitors Tale, The Empire Strikes Back: So You Want to be a Jedi?), is working with Lucy to transform her idea into her very own short story book!

5.     Candy Creation Winner: Giselle Decker, Age 6, Hometown: Mesa, Arizona

Following in Willy Wonka's footsteps and with the help of Dylan's Candy Bar, Giselle's idea was turned into a magical, edible creation – a 3D-printed piece of candy!

The Golden Ticket winners also won the chance to see the new Broadway musical "Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in New York City the first weekend in August and are now traveling on an incredible family trip for four to the UK provided by Norwegian Air, which has two aircraft with Roald Dahl as its tailfin hero.The first was introduced last year, and the second was just put into service this summer.

Additionally, key stationery sponsor Post-it® Brand is proud to reward the teachers of the five winning children with special Post-it® Brand  educational materials, and the winning teachers will also be gifted with a Roald Dahl library of books valued at $500.00 from Penguin Young Readers.

If you didn't win in 2017, do not despair! It has been confirmed that the Challenge will be coming back bigger and better then ever in 2018. Roald Dahl's Imaginormous Challenge is all about inspiring imaginative story ideas in children 5 to 12 years of age. Recurring annually, the challenge aims to capture a million story ideas from children across the United States by 2020.

Go to imaginormouschallenge.com TODAY to find out more about entering next year.  Remember, all it takes is 100 words to enter – and the prizes are set to be just as spectacular in 2018.

SOURCE: Roald Dahl Literary Estate

China Is The Key To Avoiding Nuclear 'Fire And Fury' In North Korea

The news of an exchange of threats between the U.S. and North Korea is reported in Tokyo on Aug. 9, 2017. AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi

By Greg Wright, University of California, Merced

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un are playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship.

North Korea got the world’s attention – and Trump’s – when it successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time on July 4. In response, the United Nations approved new economic sanctions against North Korea which, predictably, inspired a bellicose response from the rogue regime.

Trump threatened that further provocations will be met with “fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

In response, North Korea issued a threat of its own – missile strikes on the U.S. territory of Guam.

With tensions escalating, it is important to be realistic about how we can get out of this mess.

In short, any nonmilitary solution will rely on China choosing to apply its massive economic leverage over the North Korean regime. This is a point that Trump clearly recognizes. In July, he tweeted that Chinese trade with North Korea “rose 40 percent in the first quarter,” highlighting China’s reluctance to punish North Korea for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

While the poor quality of the data hinders a detailed analysis, Trump’s overall sentiment is correct. China has increased its trade with North Korea in recent years and done little to forestall North Korea’s nuclear ambitions besides backing the most recent round of U.N. sanctions. China’s foremost objective seems to be promoting greater stability from its volatile neighbor.

Yet a quick look at the data, however murky, shows just how much leverage China has, if it wishes to use it.

North Korea’s primary patron
In general, exports from one country to another can be mostly explained by the distance between them and the sizes of their markets, a pattern that holds for China and North Korea.

Geographically, they share a long border, which makes China a natural, though not inevitable, partner for trade. As a case in point, North Korea also shares a long border with South Korea, but these countries have almost no trade between them. In addition, North Korea shares a small border with Russia, with whom it has little, though ever-increasing, trade, as I discuss below.

China’s large market, proximity and – most importantly – willingness to trade with North Korea has led to a situation in which North Korea has become highly dependent on trade with what has become its primary patron. About half of North Korean exports and imports go directly to and from China and most of the rest of its trade is handled indirectly by Chinese middlemen.



North Korea’s dependence on its neighbor has grown hand-in-hand with China’s increasing economic dominance of East Asia, which gained momentum 15 years ago when China joined the World Trade Organization. Since then, both Chinese gross domestic product as well as its annual trade with North Korea have increased nearly tenfold, to around US$11 trillion and $6 billion, respectively.

North Korea imports nearly everything from China, from rubber tires to refined petroleum to pears, with no single category dominating. Meanwhile, coal constitutes about 40 percent of North Korean exports to China, followed by “non-knit men’s coats.”



Time to use that leverage?
However, recent events – such as the use of front companies by Chinese firms to evade sanctions imposed on North Korea and China’s reluctance to cut off energy supplies to the country – have led to some uncertainty about the extent to which China is willing to use this economic leverage to rein in North Korea’s military ambitions.

On one hand, China claims that coal imports from North Korea have recently been stopped as part of an effort to punish the regime for recent missile tests and the suspected assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. If true, this would be an important signal of China’s willingness to support U.S. concerns about the missile program as it would represent a loss of about a third ($930 million) of North Korea’s import revenue.

However, there is evidence that coal shipments in fact never ceased. And, in any case, China may have dramatically increased its imports of iron ore from North Korea to offset the lost coal revenues.

This is consistent with the idea that China carefully considers the resources and revenue that are available to the North Korean regime at any moment, and uses trade as a lever to control them. In this way, China walks a fine line between providing too many resources, and thus allowing the regime to prosper, and not enough resources, such that North Korea is in danger of collapsing. Ultimately, trade may be used as a lever to do some light scolding, but China’s overwhelming concern is preventing North Korea’s collapse.

Further evidence that China has tight control over the North Korean economy comes from a recent report from C4ADS. The research group found close, and often common, ownership ties between most of the major Chinese companies who do business with North Korea. This suggests that trade with North Korea is highly centralized and thus easily controlled.

Trucks cross Friendship Bridge from China’s Dandong, Liaoning province, to North Korea’s Sinuiju. Reuters/Thomas Peter

Russia: North Korea’s other ‘friend’
China is not the only country that North Korea trades with, though the others currently pale in comparison. Other top export destinations include India ($97.8 million), Pakistan ($43.1 million) and Burkina Faso ($32.8 million). In terms of imports, India ($108 million), Russia ($78.3 million) and Thailand ($73.8 million) currently sell the most to North Korea.

Russia in particular may soon complicate U.S. efforts to isolate the regime. While still small, Russian trade with North Korea increased 73 percent over the first two months of 2017 compared with the same period of the previous year.

But whereas China is legitimately worried that an economic crisis in North Korea could lead to a flood of refugees or all-out war, Russia likely sees engagement with North Korea in much simpler terms, namely as an additional way to gain geopolitical advantage relative to the U.S.

A way out?
Nearly all experts agree that there is no easy way to “solve” the North Korea problem. However, one plausible approach is to encourage South Korea and Japan to begin to develop nuclear weapons programs of their own, and to only discontinue these programs if China takes meaningful steps to use its trade with North Korea to reign in the regime.

Threatening to introduce new nuclear powers to the world is clearly risky, however stable and peaceful South Korea and Japan currently are. But China is highly averse to having these economic and political rivals acquire nuclear capabilities, as it would threaten China’s ongoing pursuit of regional control. In short, this is a sensitive pressure point that could be used to sway the Chinese leadership.

One way or another, China must become convinced that the costs of propping up the North Korean regime through trade are higher than the costs of an increased probability that the regime will collapse.

[This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 6, 2017.]

About Today's Contributor:
Greg Wright, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of California, Merced

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Bonus Picture:

Image via Trumpton FB Page

"Families Like Yours" Documentary Celebrates LGBT Families At World Premiere

The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), the business voice of the LGBT community, is proud to announce the world premiere of Families Like Yours, a powerful documentary exploring the love, compassion, sacrifice, and success of LGBT families in America. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dk Realizadores, NGLCC, and Wells Fargo underwrote the film's production. Deutsche Bank and Hilton presented the premiere screening in New York City on July 17, 2017.

Through candid interviews and humorous real life stories, Families Like Yours demystifies LGBT families and their lives, showcasing that they are just as loving, busy, and complicated as any other family.  

Families Like Yours follows five families as they attempt to balance work and school, rush kids to sports practice, and deal with diaper duty. From all across the nation and in all different stages of family life, from conception to grandchildren, these families represent a cross-section of the modern American family-- the only difference is that they are LGBT families.

"It has never been more important to showcase the richness of diversity in America. LGBT families are a fixture of every community in this country, and Families Like Yours demonstrates why love, dignity, and respect for all is a virtue that should unite each of us," said NGLCC Co-Founder and President Justin Nelson, who is an Executive Producer on the film along with NGLCC Co-Founder and CEO Chance Mitchell. "This film is dedicated to the brave and inspiring LGBT families across the nation who overcome discrimination and fear as they work hard, give back to their communities, and strive to achieve the American Dream just like everybody else."

Award-winning filmmakers Rodolfo Moro and Marcos Duszczak are the creative team behind a parallel film in Argentina, Familias por Igual. The film was widely praised, receiving several prestigious awards that added momentum to Argentina's LGBT equality movement.

Families Like Yours will next be screened at the 2017 NGLCC International Business & Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, ahead of submissions to film festivals and LGBT conferences around the world.

More information and the official trailer can be found at nglcc.org/FamiliesLikeYours 

SOURCE: National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce

'Chinks In The World-Machine' – On The Casting Of The 13th Doctor Who

The Whovian Life via Twitter

By Una McCormack, Anglia Ruskin University

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who dreamed of going into space. She would sit on the floor in the library, cross-legged on the carpet before a big shelf of books and read about a machine that could travel in time and space. She would put on the television, and see the Doctor and the TARDIS, and wish that she could be there too. She wanted to be on the Enterprise, and the Liberator and the Millennium Falcon – and she imagined great adventures, in which she saved the world, the galaxy, and (why not) the universe.

Unfortunately, a Catholic girls’ school in the 1980s was not a great place to harbour such ambitions – and there weren’t many kindred spirits dreaming these particular dreams. They became private stories, told to myself at odd moments, just before falling asleep – but not to be shared. After all, what kind of girl likes Doctor Who? What kind of girl wants to jaunt around time and space?

At long last! BBC/Colin Hutton

To say that I am delighted at the news that Jodie Whittaker has been chosen to play the 13th Doctor is a huge understatement. I enjoyed the whole media build up immensely. I was greatly entertained watching good friends rapidly bring themselves up to speed on the rules of tennis in order to predict how long a Wimbledon final might be – so that they could make sure they were on hand when the announcement was made. I watched the trailer with refreshed wonder and a whoop of glee at the reveal.

I remembered how happy friends had been when Christopher Eccleston was cast as the ninth Doctor back in 2004, how glad they were that now there was a Doctor who seemed like them. I hoped that they would be glad now that there was a Doctor who was like me.

Remaking the world
For me, science fiction – speculative fiction – is a genre that asks us to think about possibility. All good fiction, of course, asks us to expand our horizons by sympathetically imagining the experience of others. But the apparatus of speculative fiction provides us with particular, useful tools to re-imagine what that “other” might be – and to imagine the kinds of worlds that would be needed in order to make radically different kinds of being possible.

Alien life, yes; but also the kinds of human life and organisation that might be brought about by technological or scientific advance – or the radical re-imagining of how power, authority and resources might be e distributed among us. Its best writers, such as Ursula Le Guin, seem to have the power to remake the world.

Science fiction grows up
Science fiction has not, historically, been generous to women. Mothered by Mary Shelley (in Frankenstein and The Last Man), the genre, throughout the first half of the 20th century, becomes predominantly a form of heroic literature, steeped in fantasies of mastery and conquest.

Women were rarely present in this literature, except as trophies or temptations. We survived, in the arresting phrase coined by the great science fiction writer James Tiptree Jr (aka Alice Bradley Sheldon and Raccoona Sheldon): “by ones and two, in the chinks of the world-machine”. A surge of feminist Utopian writing in the 1980s marks the beginning of a shake-up of the genre, which can now delight and surprise in many ways.

Casting a woman as the Doctor seems like something that should have happened years ago. Television is expensive, success is not assured, and risks with a flagship property can be difficult to justify. The incoming production team should be commended for this decision, choosing in Whittaker an actor of great talent whose presence will surely revitalise this ever-changing, fascinating, British institution.

Having a woman as the Doctor will not solve the conditions of vast and cruel inequality under which millions of women live today. It will not alter the grotesquery of the most qualified woman in history being passed over for the job of US president in favour of an overgrown child who wanted a toy and now doesn’t know what to do with it.

But representation and visibility do matter. What I have enjoyed most about this casting news is thinking about how this Doctor – a woman Doctor – was going to be the one that my little girl would grow up seeing. She will be her Doctor. The hero, the adventurer, the person to whom the text turns for moral and intellectual authority – that is a woman now.

A little more of the glass ceiling has cracked. A spanner has been thrown into the workings of the world machine. We are reminded that something different is possible.

About Today's Contributor:
Una McCormack, Lecturer, Creative Writing Faculty, Department of English and Media, Anglia Ruskin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

Tearing Up Human Rights Law Won't Protect Us From Terrorism

Seeking a carte blanche? PA/Stefan Rousseau

By Fiona de Londras, University of Birmingham

Prime minister Theresa May has announced her resolve to tear up human rights law if it prevents her, and her government, from tackling extremism and countering terrorism.

This rhetoric is hardly new. It echoes Tony Blair’s post 9/11 claim that “the rules of the game are changing”. It’s also a continuation of May’s approach as home secretary. Over her term in that role, she systematically sought to dismantle legal barriers to desired government action. Indeed, it chimes well with longstanding concerns on the part of many Conservatives that human rights law is nothing more than an obstacle to security.

May’s proposal raises questions about what exactly the perceived shortfall in counter-terrorism powers is, why and how human rights law is said to prevent its resolution, and what the evidence for these claims is.

Nobody denies that we need laws to counter terrorism and prevent radicalisation. That includes having powers to investigate potential involvement in terrorist activity and criminal offences that try to ensure the state can intervene to prevent terrorist attacks.

However, one can hardly imagine a legal power that would effectively prevent people from launching low-tech attacks such as those at Westminster and London Bridge. Nor can one seriously claim that the arsenal of counter-terrorism powers is under-stocked. UK law contains extensive provisions to prevent and criminalise all forms of engagement with terrorism, including powers relating to data surveillance, disruption of terrorist financing, criminalisation of travelling for terrorist purposes, and the criminalisation of all forms of support for terrorist activities.

Human rights law has not prevented the UK from developing and implementing these laws. To be sure, there may be some things that the government would wish to do which human rights law has prevented, forcing the state to find other, human rights compliant, ways to achieve the same ends. However, that is hardly a basis for criticising the law – it is, in fact, precisely what human rights law (and all law) is supposed to do.

The whole idea of law is that it restrains not only what we can do as citizens and residents of the state, but also what the state can require us to do, prevent us from doing, and punish us for. If human rights law has forced the state to rethink or restrain some of its activities, that simply means the law is working.

This is the key point here. Human rights law doesn’t prevent the state from countering terrorism, but it does prevent the state from doing so in whatever way it pleases and without limitation.

Who do we want to be?
There is ample space within human rights law for the state to take muscular steps in the name of security. It can prevent people from travelling, adjust normal criminal procedures to protect intelligence, and restrict what people can say publicly in order to prevent the glorification of terrorism. It can limit how people associate and organise to prevent the emergence of terrorist groups, and restrict people’s ability to engage in certain behaviours online.

Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane, two of the three London Bridge attackers. PA

If a situation is truly grave – to the extent that it “threatens the life of the nation” as it says in article 15 of the ECHR – the state can even derogate from some rights. This means that, for a period of time and in order to restore “normalcy”, the state can limit the extent to which certain rights can be enjoyed. It can take actions that are ordinarily not permitted, provided those actions are limited to what is “strictly required by the exigencies of the situation”.

If, then, the government is arguing that human rights law is preventing it from countering terrorism it needs to identify what it is that it considers needs to be done. It must state how human rights law is preventing them from doing that. And it must first consider how the desired ends might be achieved through means that are compliant with human rights.

It may be that there are some things the state wants to do that human rights law will not permit – mass internment, expulsion of all non-citizens without distinction, the total shut down of the internet, retention and surveillance of the content of all communications, for example, would all likely fall foul of human rights law. If the government proposed such actions and was, indeed, obstructed by human rights, would we really say human rights law is getting in the way of our security? Or would we acknowledge that it is protecting us from government overreach?

This, of course, leads to the most difficult and fundamental question of all: what kind of society do we want to be? If it’s one where we strive for total security, then of course human rights law might rightly be identified as an obstacle. Total security cannot be achieved in a society where the rule of law, human rights, and democracy are respected and upheld as fundamental principles.

Thanks to these principles we are free to flourish and live in a vibrant, diverse, rights-respecting society. But even without these principles, total security is a myth; no amount of law can protect us from all threats all of the time.

Does this mean the state shouldn’t take steps to prevent terrorism? Of course not. But it does mean that the state should not be able to take whatever steps it considers necessary to prevent terrorism, regardless of the impact on rights.

It is the legal protection of human rights, together with a vibrant civil society and healthy democratic system, that sets the boundaries of permitted action and best equips us to build a resilient society in which terrorism can effectively be countered. Tearing up human rights law would put all of that in jeopardy.

About Today's Countributor:
Fiona de Londras, Professor of Global Legal Studies, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham

This article was originally published on The Conversation.