text:
Weekend in Preview: Softball commences 56-game season, swim and dive to face USC
By Nicholas Yekikian, Melissa Zhang, Armando Carrillo and Claire Britton
Men's Tennis, Softball, Sports, Swim & Dive, Track and Field
UCLA men's tennis will host UNLV on Saturday and will look to rebound from its first loss of the season. Senior Martin Redlicki is currently the top-ranked athlete in the Oracle/ITA Division I Men's National Singles Ranking and has held that spot since November. (Pinkie Su/Daily Bruin)
Nicholas Yekikian, assistant Sports editor
UCLA softball's 56-game campaign begins this weekend.
The No. 4 Bruins will face four different opponents this weekend – none of whom are ranked.
For its season opener Friday, UCLA plays Maryland and Middle Tennessee. Saturday features a doubleheader against Cal Poly and its last game of the weekend will be against UC Riverside.
Coach Kelly Inouye-Perez is approaching the year with fresh eyes and a number of fresh faces.
UCLA has the No.1-ranked freshman class going into this season, and this weekend is when it will get its first taste of college ball.
"We don't get any bonus points for having been in the world series last year," Inouye-Perez said. "We need to get out there and compete. I've got some freshmen that I can't wait to see play for the first time … and seniors that are on a mission."
The Bruins will welcome back five seniors to the roster, including infielder Kylee Perez and pitcher Selina Ta'amilo. For them, the mission begins this weekend.
All of the tournament's games will be played at Easton Stadium.
UCLA track and field will compete in its final two regular season meets of the year this weekend.
Most of the team will head to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the Don Kirby Invitational. The distance runners, however, will make their way to Washington state for the Husky Classic.
The split-squad affair will be the first action track and field has had in two weeks.
So far, the throwers have been the big news for the Bruins. Freshman thrower Alyssa Wilson has already broken into the UCLA record book in the shot put. Junior Justin Stafford has done the same in weight throw.
They both sit seventh all-time in their respective events.
As the indoor season begins to wind down, throws coach John Frazier said he will be switching up Stafford's training to get him ready for the outdoor season, but he and Wilson will still be going to New Mexico.
This weekend marks a number of Bruin debuts too. Freshman sprinter Tyler Asemota and redshirt freshman miler Andy Ehrenberg will make their UCLA debuts for track and field, though Ehrenberg ran for cross country in 2017.
Sophomore distance runner Cassandra Durgy will make her season debut at the Husky Classic in the mile.
Melissa Zhang, senior staff
UCLA will host UNLV on Saturday for its last home match before hitting the road for Seattle and the ITA Division I National Men's Team Indoor Championship.
No. 7 UCLA (6-1) will look to rebound after its first loss of the season Sunday, falling to No. 5 Stanford in the Bruins' first matchup against another top-10 team. UCLA dropped one spot in the Division I rankings after its narrow 4-3 defeat.
The UNLV Rebels boast a 4-2 record, but have been unable to log a single win across the 16 occasions in which they have faced the Bruins. UCLA most recently left Henderson, Nevada, with a 6-1 win in March 2016.
Senior Martin Redlicki, who earned the No. 1 spot in the Oracle/ITA Division I Men's National Singles Rankings in November, held on to the top slot in the country when the list was updated Wednesday. Redlicki and the Bruins will face off against the Rebels at the Los Angeles Tennis Center starting at 1 p.m.
Armando Carrillo, Daily Bruin contributor
The Bruins only have one more dual meet before heading into the postseason.
UCLA swimming and diving (5-5, 2-4 Pac-12) will go up against No. 13 USC (6-2, 3-2) on Friday and Saturday at Spieker Aquatics Center.
Coach Cyndi Gallagher said the Bruins should know what to expect because they have already competed against USC at the SMU Classic, during which the Trojans took first and the Bruins took fourth, and at the Texas Invitational in fall 2017.
"(We have) been rising up to the occasion with every team," Gallagher said. "I'm sure that our team will challenge."
Last season, the Bruins posted nine personal bests while battling the Trojans and, this year, Gallagher expects nothing less.
Gallagher said that the rivalry between the two teams brings out the best in the athletes and that someone always surprises the team with an uplifting performance.
"We've done the work, and we know we've done the work," said senior Marie-Pierre Delisle. "(I expect) to see some fast racing, to see really big improvements in times and technique from my teammates and myself."
Gallagher said that the swimmers don't feel drained when they compete at this meet because there's a lot of energy.
"(With) this meet, you can't really help it," Gallagher said. "The band's coming, you know, it's just, the parents are here. It's Senior Day. I mean, there's just a lot of emotion."
Despite this meet being the last dual, Delisle said the Bruins are focused on what lies ahead at the Pac-12 championships and at the NCAA championships.
Gallagher said that the swimmers are not going to start tapering until after USC.
Diving coach Tom Stebbins said he expects to see his divers fight to execute what they've been working on at practice and to seek composure over anything else.
Claire Britton, Daily Bruin contributor
UCLA women's water polo has scored 107 goals in the last nine games.
"We play our best offensively when we start with a really good defense," said junior defender Rachel Whitelegge. "When we make good stops and really communicate, that really translates down the pool, allowing us to feel a lot more confident in each other knowing that we know we also have each other's back defensively."
This weekend, the No. 4 Bruins (9-0) are gearing up to head down to San Diego for the Triton Invitational.
In addition to good defense, for sophomore attacker Brooke Maxson, the key to outstanding offensive play stems from the within the team itself.
"Our best game comes when we are all united and we really focus in what we we've been doing in training throughout the whole season," Maxson said.
Coach Adam Wright said the Bruins plan on perfecting various techniques before this weekend.
"We need to have better balance of how we're moving, how we are attacking zones," Wright said. "That's going to be very important, because, at the end of the day, teams are going to come into the zone and how we approach it is going to be important."
Among many teams at the Triton Invitational, UCLA will see 11 ranked opponents, including No. 2 USC (3-0), one of the Bruins' biggest rivals.
"I think it should be a good showcase of who's going to be ready to show up – like, when it matters – (and) who is going to going to put in the extra work," Maxson said.
UCLA will face Iona in the first round of the invitational Saturday at 8 a.m.
Nicholas Yekikian |
Assistant Sports editor
Yekikian is an assistant Sports editor. He was previously a Sports reporter for the women's volleyball and track and field beats.
@NickkWhyy
Melissa Zhang
Melissa Zhang is an assistant Sports editor. She was previously a reporter for the women's water polo, women's soccer, women's volleyball, men's volleyball, and cross country beats.
Armando Carrillo
Claire Britton |
Britton is currently a contributor on the swim & dive beat. She was previously a contributor on the men's water polo and women's water polo beats.
Experienced UCLA swim and dive begins season with two dual meets
Swim and dive have strong weekend at Texas and Georgia invitationals
UCLA swim and dive sees new roster, aims to continue improvement
Swim and dive takes on 2 undefeated challengers in dual meets


text:
Q: Writing unit test case for third party cli package I have a basic CLI program built using yargs. I'm able to cover test cases for exported functions in the application.
As you can see below test coverage is not done from line 12-18 which. How do we write unit test coverage for third-party package like yargs?
index.js
const yargs = require('yargs');
const { hideBin } = require('yargs/helpers');
const greet = (name) => {
  return `Welcome ${name}`;
};
yargs(hideBin(process.argv)).command(
  'run [name]',
  'print name',
  (yargs) => {
    yargs.positional('name', { describe: 'Your name', type: 'string' });
  },
  (args) => {
    const { name } = args;

    const greetMsg = greet(name);

    console.log(greetMsg);
  }
).argv;

module.exports = { greet };

index.test.js
const { greet } = require('./index')

describe.only('greeting', () => {
  it('greet', async () => {
    const greetMsg = greet('test')

    expect(greetMsg).toBe('Welcome test')
  })
})

test coverage
PASS  ./index.test.js
greeting
  ✓ greet (5 ms)

----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
File      | % Stmts | % Branch | % Funcs | % Lines | Uncovered Line #s
----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
All files |   63.64 |      100 |   33.33 |   63.64 |
index.js  |   63.64 |      100 |   33.33 |   63.64 | 12-18
----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total
Tests:       1 passed, 1 total
Snapshots:   0 total
Time:        1.316 s, estimated 2 s
Ran all test suites.

A: You can use jest.doMock(moduleName, factory, options) to mock yargs and yargs/helpers module. Since the yargs function in the module scope will be executed when requiring the module.  You need to use jest.resetModules() to resets the module registry - the cache of all required modules for each test case before requiring the index.js module.

This is useful to isolate modules where local state might conflict between tests.

E.g.
index.js:
const yargs = require('yargs');
const { hideBin } = require('yargs/helpers');

const greet = (name) => {
  return `Welcome ${name}`;
};
yargs(hideBin(process.argv)).command(
  'run [name]',
  'print name',
  (yargs) => {
    yargs.positional('name', { describe: 'Your name', type: 'string' });
  },
  (args) => {
    const { name } = args;

    const greetMsg = greet(name);

    console.log(greetMsg);
  }
).argv;

module.exports = { greet };

index.test.js:
describe.only('greeting', () => {
  beforeEach(() => {
    jest.resetModules();
  });
  it('greet', () => {
    const { greet } = require('./index');
    const greetMsg = greet('test');
    expect(greetMsg).toBe('Welcome test');
  });

  it('should pass', () => {
    jest.doMock('yargs');
    jest.doMock('yargs/helpers');
    const yargs = require('yargs');
    const { hideBin } = require('yargs/helpers');
    const mArgv = {
      command: jest.fn().mockImplementation(function (command, description, builder, handler) {
        builder(this);
        handler({ name: 'teresa teng' });
        return this;
      }),
      argv: {},
      positional: jest.fn(),
    };
    yargs.mockReturnValueOnce(mArgv);
    require('./');
    expect(hideBin).toBeCalled();
    expect(yargs).toBeCalled();
    expect(mArgv.positional).toBeCalledWith('name', { describe: 'Your name', type: 'string' });
  });
});

test result:
 PASS  examples/67830954/index.test.js (7.17 s)
  greeting
    ✓ greet (355 ms)
    ✓ should pass (23 ms)

  console.log
    Welcome teresa teng

      at examples/67830954/index.js:18:13

----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
File      | % Stmts | % Branch | % Funcs | % Lines | Uncovered Line #s
----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
All files |     100 |      100 |     100 |     100 |
 index.js |     100 |      100 |     100 |     100 |
----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total
Tests:       2 passed, 2 total
Snapshots:   0 total
Time:        7.668 s, estimated 8 s

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The Track
Open-air sex trade permeates daily life on Houston's outskirts
By Gabrielle Banks
First of three parts
A dozen miles from downtown Houston, cars inch down an industrial side street and drivers idle by a cluster of young women bathed in streetlight, brokering primal transactions.
A middle-aged woman in stilettos and a tight-fitting shirt stretched down to her thighs crosses a feeder road on a weekday morning, flicking her tongue suggestively at commuters stopped at the light.
A few blocks away, tenants tell the building manager they've seen strangers having sex outside their doorways, in their complex's laundry room and inside Range Rovers in the gated parking lot.
A kindergartner and first grader wonder aloud on their walk to school about the ladies standing around with their privates showing.
"They're selling their body to feed their kids," their mother says.
These scenes might raise eyebrows in sprawling suburbs and well-heeled city districts, but they are ordinary and unremarkable to shopkeepers and apartment dwellers in this urban patch on the southwest outskirts of the city. It's known to prostitutes, cops and johns as the Bissonnet Track.
The neighborhood has earned an international reputation in recent decades for the street trafficking that permeates everyday life. Arrests have made barely a dent in the criminal activity.
Now, local officials have taken the radical step of asking a judge to declare several blocks off-limits to more than 80 people accused of engaging in prostitution — labeling them nuisances to the community and threatening fines if they return.
The mayor and police chief trumpeted the rare ban last August, and residents and business owners cheered the county's calls for an "anti-prostitution zone" around a triangle framed by U.S. 59, Beltway 8 and Bissonnet Street. The requested civil injunction, they say, will help shut down the sex trade on the Bissonnet Track.
But as a legal challenge plays out in court, criticism has mounted. Anti-trafficking organizations say the civil suit against alleged prostitutes, pimps and johns could harm victims of the sex trade. Civil liberties advocates say it violates fundamental rights without addressing the problems.
Lawyers for the accused call it misguided and punitive — targeting people for selling themselves but ignoring the circumstances that led them to sex work.
Kathryn Griffin, center, of the Harris County Precinct 1 Constable's office, leads a support group for ex-prostitutes and sex-trafficking victims at a mansion in Houston. Griffin, 59, calls herself an "ex-ho" and says it took her 22 rehabs to shake her crack addiction.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez/Staff Photographer | Houston Chronicle)
'Called a nuisance'
For those working the streets, it's known as "the game": the life and livelihood of the sex trade, the rules of survival.
Kathryn Griffin has spent years on the front lines of an achingly complex undertaking, helping people find their way out of the life. In her local recovery group, none of about 30 former prostitutes and trafficking victims had heard of the joint effort by the state and county to eject people like them from the streets.
"Nobody wants to be called a nuisance," Griffin belted out to her Wednesday group, punching hard on "nobody." It sounded like the first refrain of a sermon.
"Hell, we know we a nuisance! Do y'all know we a nuisance?" she asked, pacing between face-to-face rows of people in padded chairs who nodded and cracked smiles.
"Mmm-mmmhhh," one hummed back.
"That's right," another said.
Six participants raised their hands, affirming nonchalantly that they had "worked Bissonnet."
Sure, Griffin said, they had brought hardship to the neighborhoods they worked, but they had shouldered traumas of their own. Messing up didn't make you disposable.
People cycle through prison and back to the life, Griffin said. Going straight requires honesty, dedication and time. She then rolled into a favorite riff — slipping into character to tell them they'd never break free if they heeded the wrong messages from the wrong people.
"You sitting on a gold mine! There's no reason you should be broke as long as you can have sex!" she hollered.
Miss Kathy, as she's known by three generations of people trying to exit "the game," is a brash-talking former prostitute and ex-backup singer for Rick James and Parliament with roots in Inglewood, Calif., and Hattiesburg, Miss. She runs a recovery program for the Precinct 1 Constable's Office called, We've Been There, Done That.
It took her 22 rehabs and 22 years to shake a crack habit and confront the trauma and sexual abuse she endured as a child and later as a call girl. The prospect of 35 years in the penitentiary propelled her into becoming what she calls "a retired ho."
Kathryn Griffin formerly bought and used crack at this house, which was vacant in 2009 when this photo was taken. Griffin now runs recovery groups for ex-prostitutes and trafficking victims at the Harris County Precinct 1 Constable's office and at the Plane State Jail in Dayton. (Staff file photo)
Griffin, 59, hosts the weekly gathering at a friend's ornate mansion typically used for weddings and events. She is also founder and director of Our Roadway to Freedom, another "ho class," as she calls it, at Plane State Jail, a women's lockup in Dayton northeast of Houston. She served a stint there from 1996-97 before entering a Harris County drug program.
"Who better to teach a ho not to ho than a ho?" Griffin asked the mix of voluntary and court-ordered attendees, switching between office and street vernacular.
Group participants include mothers and grandmothers with toddlers wandering at their feet. They share victories and terrifying moments from their week, as Griffin intercedes with mini-lectures on topics such as, "You shouldn't have never gone back to him," and the pitfalls of shoplifting at Walmart. On any given week, she will make a point in song, unleash a string of profanities and pause to praise God.
Kathryn Griffin, or Miss Kathy, as she's known by three generations of people trying to exit "the game," is a brash-talking former prostitute and ex-backup singer for Rick James and Parliament who runs two recovery programs.
Haunted by the past
The Bissonnet Track veterans at a recent meeting were mostly transplants to Houston who said trauma and addiction led them to prostitution.
Maylela Lucas, 42, a transgender woman with a sunny demeanor, grew up in a turbulent military household in rural North Carolina. She contracted HIV at 16 when her father raped her, she said. He died a few years later.
Lucas escaped to Houston and began transitioning to female.
"I was haunted by my father doing this to me, his son, you know?" she said. "I began to change my identity, because Jeremy was hurting so bad. Maylela had to become somebody to get away from the pain."
She was working as a female impersonator when an addict boyfriend introduced her to crack cocaine, which freed her from the incessant trauma of the abuse. She started prostituting north of Bissonnet in the 1990s to fund her habit. The money was easy, she said.
Maylela Lucas, 42, who was born Jeremy, grew up in rural North Carolina. She said she contracted HIV at 16 after her father raped her."I was haunted by my father doing this to me his son. You know? I began to change my identity because Jeremy was hurting so bad. Maylela had to become somebody to get away from the pain," she said.
"I'm not patting myself on my back, but I was a pretty girl and nobody hardly knew what I was," she said. One customer stabbed her after he saw she had a penis. Lucas needed stitches for the wound but she didn't go to a doctor until after she spent the day's earnings getting high.
Another veteran of the Track, Tracy, ran away from a big middle-class family in Chicago where her father partied and gambled. Like several people interviewed by the Houston Chronicle, Tracy, 49, asked that her full name be withheld to protect her safety.
She said she entered the sex trade at 14 and began dating a drug dealer who gave her free samples. She picked up a crack addiction as a young mother in Houston and supported her habit working "renegade" — without a pimp — blocks from her home on the Bissonnet Track. When she was 25, she said, a customer raped her at gunpoint.
Tracy, 49, grew up in a middle class family in Chicago and left her home young. She started prostituting at 14. She later worked on the Bissonnet Track and was assaulted.
The memories of mortal peril — involving knives, guns, beatdowns and hostage-takings — are common in Griffin's orbit, as are stories of friends lost to murderous pimps and johns. Some of the homicides are unsolved, such as the brutal stabbing death of 21-year-old Natalie Fisher, whose body was found in a Houston ditch in 2016.
Fisher, a suspected trafficking victim from Central Texas, previously had listed a motel in the heart of the Track as her home address. Fisher's mother is now suing the motel on charges the owners failed to intervene when a pimp allegedly held her there and forced her into sex work.
Another of Miss Kathy's charges, Kristen Howk, is a rapper from New York with torn jeans and tattoo scribbles on her arms, neck and face. The 46-year-old said she worked the streets of Houston from the ages of 19 to 45. She was raped more times than she can count. She said she maintained her sanity by shutting off all sensation during sex.
"You turn on and off like a water faucet," Howk said.
"I've been shot in a drive-by, I've been raped too many times to count," said Kristen Howk, 46. Howk attends Kathryn Griffin's support group for ex-prostitutes and sex trafficking victims. "I have stab wounds all over my body," said Howk.
When describing one of her former pimps, Kristen Howk, 46, said: "He had me thinking he was actually my boyfriend," she said, adding, "I was living in fear for my life, because he told me that Texas wasn't big enough for me and him and he could find me anywhere."
Ex-con with a badge
Outside the support group, Griffin works with law enforcement to rescue sex trafficking victims. In 16 years, she has met thousands caught up in prostitution and trafficking, she says. She's at the mercy of her cellphone, which rings at all hours, dozens of times a day.
Idling in her car outside a warehouse on a December morning, Griffin got a call from Sierra, 23, an intellectually disabled woman with epilepsy she hadn't heard from in a while.
In 2017, Sierra was rescued by a good Samaritan in Houston while being attacked by two men near the downtown bus station. When emergency crews arrived, she was convulsing on the sidewalk.
Sierra told police she'd been kidnapped from a convenience store in Ohio by a Houston man who drove her to Texas and compelled her to work on Bissonnet during the 2017 Super Bowl. When she failed to make her quota, the pimp dropped her off near the bus station, she said.
Sierra was in a childish state when discharged from Ben Taub Hospital the day after the attack, according to Griffin, who'd been summoned to pick her up.
Pimps often target women with disabilities because they are vulnerable, Griffin said.
Sierra recuperated at Griffin's home two years ago but ultimately returned to Ohio. On the December call, she said family members there had spent her Social Security funds and she was homeless. The young woman switched to video chat and positioned her phone to show where "the dude she was messing with" — her new pimp, Griffin surmised — had torn her hair out because she kept having seizures and refused to work.
"I've been going through it, mama. ... All that long hair I had when you seen me," said the young woman, propped up on elbows on an unmade bed.
"Oh my GOD. Oh my GOD," Griffin muttered back from the driver's seat of her Jeep Cherokee.
"Look at my face. You see my face?" Sierra asked, pulling the phone close to show scrapes and bruises. "See this, mama? Real bad. That's why I said I've gotta get out of here."
Was she doing drugs?
Smoking weed, Sierra said.
Was she taking her meds?
No, and she had suffered two seizures.
Griffin ended the conversation, lit a cigar and turned her car toward the Bissonnet Track. She exited the Beltway near a local chain motel with "no prostitution" signs posted in the parking lot.
Griffin then turned off the main boulevard onto Plainfield Street, pulling in beside a young woman in a halter top and red booty shorts waiting for customers in sports cars and utility trucks at the end of the lunch rush. At night, the scene is even more congested, with buyers lining up as if it's a drive-through restaurant.
"Lemme give you this, mama," Griffin said, holding her constable's business card out the car window. "Call me if you ever, EVER, want some help."
She plugged a transitional housing program, available for those willing to enroll in school.
"I used to be a ho. I'm the first ex-con with a badge," Griffin said, referring to her civilian credential.
"I remember you," said the 22-year-old, who goes by the street name Honey. Standing tall and confident on her spot, Honey added, "You pulled me over last time."
The pair chuckled. People call when they're ready, Griffin said.
Honey had been prostituting for 10 years and said she planned to stop soon. Just not today.
On the Track's main thoroughfare, Griffin slowed for a petite woman walking eastward, past a convenience store, in a short dress and giant hoop earrings.
She tried a more subtle approach with the teenager who calls herself Diamond.
Did she know about a john who had been raping prostitutes? Griffin asked. Had she seen a young trafficking victim with tattoos all over her face?
Maybe, Diamond said, her eyes scanning the traffic. She wasn't sure. Griffin handed over her business card and said to call anytime. Not a hard sell.
She wasn't ready.
In this photo from 1988, an off-duty Houston police patrolman and his personal horse, Mike, meet with shoppers as he patrols a Westwood Mall parking lot. (Staff file photo)
'The street is still there'
The neighborhood targeted for the anti-prostitution zone was a master-planned community built on a cattle pasture that once belonged to oilman R.E. "Bob" Smith. It was an upscale, middle-class area when the Westwood Fashion Place, billed as the country's first split three-level mall and later named Westwood Mall, opened in 1975.
New apartment complexes and condominiums catered to young professionals who commuted to the medical center and downtown. Developers plugged the cathedral ceilings and wood-burning fireplaces at new apartments on Club Creek Drive, as well as the tennis courts and boat storage at the Westwood Village townhomes. The Westwood Country Club and Westwood Racquetball Club were nearby.
Low-rise towers with atrium features and helipads began cropping up in the late 1970s, along with plans for landscaped esplanades on Bissonnet, new hike-and-bike trails and a recreation area along Brays Bayou.
But the momentum stalled amid the crack epidemic and the economic downturn in the oil industry in the 1980s. In the summer of 1992, a tourist who was shoe-shopping with family was fatally shot at Westwood Plaza. A shop owner told a reporter that violent crime in the area was "almost unheard of."
In 1995, a gunman fired at a romantic rival inside a busy Westwood Mall restaurant. By the late 1990s, many stores in the mall had been shuttered. Cort McMurray, who has lived nearby for decades, remembers an evangelical church taking over the mall's movie theater.
McMurray said prostitution picked up in the early 1990s. He and colleagues would pick up discarded condoms in their office building's parking lot.
Now, the storefronts are occupied by pawn shops, convenience stores, check-cashing spots, fast food joints and businesses that give a sense of the vast mix of ethnicities in the area — African braiding salons, a Filipino buffet, storefront iglesias and halal meat shops.
Residents are significantly poorer and with less schooling than the typical Houstonian. About 27 percent of adults 25 and older have less than a ninth grade education, compared with 13 percent in Houston. And 40 percent are below the poverty level, compared with less than 21 percent citywide, according to Census data collected between 2013 to 2017. The median household income is just over $27,000, below Houston's median of more than $49,000.
Kenya Latour, who used the street name Peaches during the years she worked the corner of Forum Park and Sugar Branch, estimated at peak times she saw 200 or 300 prostitutes walking the four or five blocks of the Bissonnet Track on a single weekend.
Those with pimps try to meet their quotas. Those without pimps want to pay the rent or feed their kids. Most have drug problems, she said.
Police crack down and stop it for a time, she said. But the prostitutes return.
"They put the gate up around the Payless; they close it down," she said. "But the Burger King is still there. They can close it down, the Whataburger is still there. ... The street is still there."
Women who live near the Track say they've been propositioned by men who thought they were prostitutes.
Street-brokered hookups
In the last five years, police have arrested nearly 1,500 people in the Bissonnet zone for engaging in prostitution, many repeatedly. Yet, day and night, the johns keep coming.
"I always compare it to fishing," said Houston Police Lt. Steve Rabago, who oversaw the city's vice operations on the Track for several years. "You may get a teacher. You might get a police officer ... It's white, black, Middle Eastern, everything."
The street-brokered hookups are so commonplace that johns mistake a wide range of female pedestrians for prostitutes, propositioning them in Spanish and English. A man yelled out from his car to Gloria Arias, 50, a Salvadoran grandmother headed to the bus stop for her night job as a janitor. Another tried to pick up Danielle Agbugba, 34, a paramedic walking home from the bus stop in her EMS uniform.
The reverberations for local businesses have been palpable, though widespread publicity about the lawsuit slowed the activity, at least during daylight hours.
The wobbly migration of women in heels and lingerie used to strut past Corte Universal from the time Ana Fuentes arrived at her salon until she left at night. The 50-year-old joked about it with customers, calling it el desfile, the parade. It's better now, she said.
Suresh Patel, 74, shooed away prostitutes convening with "dates" outside his auto shop. One night, a prostitute stood blocking his car as he tried to leave, exposing her breasts through the windshield.
The frenetic environment prompted Shanice King, 26, to quit her job as manager at Family Dollar in a strip mall on Bissonnet. Once, she'd had to lock the doors with customers inside when back-and-forth shooting broke out in the parking lot between men she believed were pimps. Some days prostitutes tried to recruit her off the sales floor.
Her manager wouldn't transfer her, and it was getting worse by the day when she left, she said.
Janice Hernandez used to call the police dozens of times a day when she began working a year ago as property manager at the nearby Villa La Jolla apartments. Tenants told her they'd seen strangers having sex in the laundry room. Hernandez, 60, saw hookups in the parking lot when she showed the facility to prospective residents. She estimated there were maybe 30 or 40 trysts on the premises daily. It turned out pimps had the access code for the lot.
"It was ridiculous," Hernandez said. "We'd have all kinds of Mercedes and Range Rovers and Jaguars and Lamborghinis coming through here."
The owners began an aggressive campaign to take back the complex, investing in improvements, security and community events to attract more permanent tenants. In recent months, the trafficking has died down, she said. Kids are going outside again, and she's been able to renew leases.
A pair of stilettos hang from an electrical wire on Plainfield Street. Houston Police run regular undercover vice operations on the Bissonnet Track to address rampant street prostitution.
Shaking the memories
A month and a half after her first encounter with Griffin, Diamond strolled along Bissonnet in late January in a dress and sweater boots.
National Human Trafficking Hotline: Call 888-373-7888 or email at help@humantraffickinghotline.org to report human trafficking, get information about support services and learn about the warning signs of exploitation. Callers may remain anonymous.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: The center has an online CyberTipline and a hotline at 800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) to handle reports of child exploitation, suspected abuse, online enticement of children, child pornography or child sex trafficking.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: Call 800-799-7233 for local resources such as emergency shelters, legal advocacy and assistance and social service programs.
Harris County resources
The Landing, 9894 Bissonnet St., #605: The faith-based drop-in center within the Bissonnet Track provides clothing, food, toiletries, counseling and case management. It is open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and can be reached at 713-766-1111.
Houston Area Women's Center, 1010 Waugh Drive: The center provides free advocacy, counseling, education, career support, help finding child care and case management, and has a food pantry and limited clothing available on site. The center serves men, women and children.
Domestic Violence Hotline: Call 713 528-2121 for help with emergency or transitional and 24-hour hospital accompaniment.
Sexual Assault Hotline: Call 713-528-RAPE (7273) for 24-hour hospital accompaniment for survivors of sexual assault.
Redeemed Ministries: The faith-based organization operates an eight-bed safe house and counseling program for sex trafficking victims in the Houston area. Referrals may be made online or via voice mail at 832-447-4130.
Harris County Pct. 1 Constable's Office: Call the human trafficking hotline at 832-927-1650 and leave a message for Kathryn Griffin or call the office's main line at 713-755-5200. Griffin accepts court-ordered participants as well as voluntary ones in her weekly support group. She has connections for shelter, education programs and more.
Just 17, she'd moved to Houston from Memphis three months earlier, lured by tales of the big money girls could make on the Track, she said. Her family members — two sheriff's deputies, a corrections officer, a University of Houston student and two addicts — all know what she does for a living, and they are not happy about it.
She had been on hundreds of Bissonnet "dates," making $100 an hour, and had been arrested only once, she said. She knew to avoid using certain words when negotiating a pickup, to avoid the well-known traps. But she'd gotten caught after making plans for a rendezvous with an undercover officer who pretended he didn't speak English.
With help from the internet, they'd hashed out a price for sex in English and Spanish. Then the patrol cars moved in.
"I pulled out a Google translator and everything," she said, "and got my (expletive) in jail."
On that January day, however, she quit early, grabbed dinner at a nearby McDonald's and went back to the motel where she was staying. Within days, she texted a reporter to say she'd been ditched in San Antonio, and later called Griffin from Atlanta. She was hoping to find a way back to Houston.
It takes dedication to get out of "the game," Griffin says. Skip the soul searching and you fall back on that "gold mine" mentality. You go back to what you know.
Staying focused
The women who've been there know how hard it is to break free.
Lisa Mathis, 39, spent 25 years as a prostitute before walking away two years ago. She worked for three Bissonnet pimps and six Houston-area pimps in all. She also worked among the more bedraggled and desperate prostitutes — who would take a "date" for very little money — on a track on Telephone Road in southeast Houston.
The worst pimp, known as Money, beat her with a belt and knocked her teeth out with a hammer. Another pimp battered her when she was pregnant and left her tied up on the kitchen floor.
Now, she sometimes brings her fourth child, a bubbly 8-month-old named Versace, to Miss Kathy's group. He's the first child she's been around to parent — and the first one not born addicted to opioids.
"This little boy is my baby, and I just want to be the best mom — do whatever it takes to provide for him, to protect him," Mathis said.
She's trying to keep her head down and stay focused on the future. But with a rap sheet like hers, she knows the past is never far behind.
Lisa Mathis, 39, is raising her son, Versace, with his dad. Versace is the first of her four children that she is raising and the first opioid-free baby, she said.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez, Staff Photographer | Houston Chronicle)
Part 2: Struggling to escape 'the game' on Bissonnet
Part 3: Cracking down: Advocates fight county's 'nuisance' lawsuit
Gabrielle Banks covers federal courts for the Houston Chronicle. She was part of the team that won an APME Grand Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Hurricane Harvey. The California native has been a criminal justice and legal affairs reporter for two decades, including staff work at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Los Angeles Times, and freelance work for the New York Times, the Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, New Jersey Monthly and the Miami Herald. Follow her on Twitter @GabMoBanks or email her at gabrielle.banks@chron.com.
Godofredo A. Vásquez is a staff photographer for the Houston Chronicle, primarily covering breaking news. Godofredo was born in El Salvador but grew up in the Bay Area, where he attended San Francisco State University and graduated with a B.A. in photojournalism. Before joining the Chronicle in early 2017, Godofredo spent two years working for the Corvallis Gazette-Times and the Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @godovasquez, or reach him by email at godofredo.vasquez@chron.com.
Design by Jordan Rubio and Jasmine Goldband
Help our journalists uncover the big stories. Subscribe today.
© 2018 Hearst Newspapers, LLC.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Who Says MBAs Aren't Entrepreneurs? Seven Amazing Start-ups To Watch In 2013!
Super app Bump, a treatment for Type 2 Diabetes, luxe leather made from pineapple leaves - check out these incredible companies founded by MBAs
By Ifeatu Nnaobi
Thu Dec 27 2012
MBAs have set up companies selling tracking technology, healthy drinks and designer swimwear!
There's a lot of talk about whether MBAs have what it takes to be entrepreneurs. Skeptics think they're too straitjacketed by classroom theory and spoilt by cushy corporate life to get out there and make stuff happen.
Over the year we've covered plenty of MBA entrepreneurs, but there are a few who have truly impressed us. They're not selling the sexiest products, and many are below the radar serving B2B clients, but these seven MBA start-ups are innovating in highly competitive markets. Some of them are even making money!
Super cool, in-demand app Bump - Chicago Booth
Bump is an app created by Bump Technologies for the Apple iOS and Google Android operating systems. It allows two smartphone users to bump their phones together and transfer contact information, photos and other media to each other over the Internet. You can also uae Bump to transfer information from your phone to your laptop!
Bump is the eighth most popular free app of all time and was conceived by David Lieb, a former employee of Texas Instruments, while he was doing an MBA at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business . He felt that the process of sharing information between phones could be improved.
Early funding for the project was provided by startup incubator Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital and angel investors. The company gained attention at the CTIA international wireless conference because of its accessibility and novelty factor. In January 2011, Bump secured US$16M in a series B financing round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The company is based in Mountain View, Silicon Valley. They had over 112 million downloads on 12/12/12 and are working to change the way people interact through their phones.
Digital trackers for the aerospace industry, powered by Oridao - EMLYON
Oridao develops digital trackers and secured traceability solutions for industrial airspace and defense applications. It was founded by EMLYON Business School MBA Nicholas Reffe who also has an engineering degree. Oridao has developed long-term academic partnerships in each of its fields of expertise: low-resources, hardware oriented cryptography and secured traceability protocols.
The company partnered with the French National Institute for Scientific Research (CNRS) after receiving a European patent for its digital security algorithms. In 2008, it won a French government award as a tech innovator in business.
The pharma company fighting diabetes, Poxel - EMLYON
Poxel is developing promising compounds to fight Type 2 Diabetes and also researching cardiovascular pathologies and infectiology. Co-founder and CEO Thomas Kuhn earned his MBA at EMLYON Business School, and the company joined the EMLYON Incubator in 2009. Poxel put clinical studies into place for the Imeglimin product, a standalone treatment for type 2 diabetes. They were awarded a €436,000 grant from the European Regional Development Fund and Greater Lyon council in 2010 and also raised €16 million of Series A funding to finance the development pipeline. A few days ago Poxel raised €17million in a Series B round to develop and confirm the efficacy data of Imeglimin.
A sustainable alternative to leather made with pineapple leaves, Ananas Anam - Imperial College Business School
Ananas Anam is developing a new alternative to leather using natural fibres extracted from the waste leaves of pineapple plants. The firm claims it's the first sustainable, attractive alternative to leather and that can be used for fashion bags, footwear and furnishings and other products. The venture was founded by social entrepreneur and designer Carmen Hijosa, who has a strong track record in design and manufacture of luxury leather goods. Retailers stocking her leather goods include Harrods and Liberty of London!
Hijosa is developing the new material at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London, with a team of five MBA students from Imperial College Business School. Samples of the leather alternative, which is at the pre-manufacture stage, can be produced in a range of colours, thicknesses and finishes.
The team from Imperial was formed during the school's four-month long Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Design (IE&D) module, which is run in collaboration with the RCA. After winning the social entrepreneurship award in Imperial's Business Plan Competition in June 2012, the business is currently shortlisted for the upcoming RCA incubator.
Healthy fruit drink Koji, Future Drinks - Bath School of Management
Koji makes tasty but low calorie sparkling drinks. It was inspired by the idea of Japanese infusions and its recipes are blend of fine fruits, herbs, spices and spring water. The drinks don't contain any artificial sweeteners or additives. They are currently available in two flavours- Mandarin & Cranberry, and Lemon and Ginger. Each bottle contains just 49 calories!
The company was founded by Tim Chater who is a University of Bath School of Management Executive MBA. It has already raised £360,000 of investment funding and even had to turn down some investors. The company has collaborated with well-known cider brand Brothers Drinks, to produce and bottle the drink locally in Shepton Mallet. Tim has worked for multinationals such as Nestle and Premier foods so we're looking forward to seeing Koji take off.
CANDDi, a smart tool that analyses who is visiting your website - Manchester Business School
CANDDi's analytics tells you who is on your website. It tracks your visitors across time and multiple devices. It combines this data with social profile information to provide insights that you can turn into tactics to grow your business.
CANDDi provides detailed data on every page your propects visit, when, and for how long, videos viewed, documents downloaded and search terms. It also provides contact information, maps IP addresses and postcodes and tells you your users' Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. Finally it tells you about the companies that have checked out your site!
CANDDi was founded by Tim Langley, a serial entrepreneur and the main technology brain behind CANDDi. He holds an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University and an MBA from Manchester Business School. CANDDi is Tim's fifth venture since 2002. The company announced a new investment round of £370,000 in September 2012.
The new funding round was led by Northstar Ventures, which has put in a £250,000 mixed debt and equity investment. The remaining £100,000 comes from an elite group of angels including former TravelSupermarket.com and Kelkoo MD Chris Nixon, and Clément Schvartz, EMEA Large Customer Sales Director at Google.
Sizzling hot swimwear designed by Maaji - IE Business School
Maaji Swimwear was created by sisters Manuela and Amalia Sierra. The Colombian duo are graduates of IE Business School in Spain and design the boho chic pieces themselves. Maaji's designs are colourful and playful, and are made sustainably in Colombia. The company was founded in 2002 but Maaji's pieces have take the fashion world by storm. The pieces can be bought in over 45 countries and dozens of online stores. The company reportedly makes annual sales of over US$5 million. They also make cover ups, accessories, and swimwear for kids!
You can read more stories about MBA Entrepreneurs here
University of Bath School of Management (MBA)
emlyon business school
Serial Entrepreneur Uses MBA To Launch Businesses Across Africa And Asia
10 MBA Entrepreneurs To Watch In 2022
This MBA's Startup Matches Talent With Top Jobs In Tech


text:
X. Global stocks and p...
1. Introduction: International stability and human security in 2017
I. Nuclear weapons in international politics
II. International tensions and shifting dynamics of power
III. Human security and insecurity
IV. The prospects for international institutions
Part I. Armed conflict and conflict management, 2017
2. Armed conflicts and peace processes
I. Tracking armed conflicts and peace processes in 2017
II. Armed conflict in the Americas
III. Armed conflict in Asia and Oceania
IV. Armed conflict in Europe
V. Armed conflict in the Middle East and North Africa
VI. Armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa
I. Global trends and developments in peace operations
II. Regional trends and developments in peace operations
III. Multilateral non-peace operations
II. Debt, oil price and military expenditure
III. Transparency in military expenditure
5. International arms transfers and developments in arms production
II. Transparency in arms transfers
III. The financial value of states' arms exports
IV. Arms production and military services
7. Nuclear disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation
I. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
II. Russian–United States nuclear arms control
III. Developments in multilateral nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation
IV. International non-proliferation sanctions against North Korea
V. Implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in Iran
8. Chemical and biological security threats
I. Allegations of use of chemical weapons in Syria
II. Allegations of use of chemical weapons in Iraq and by North Korea
9. Conventional arms control
I. The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
II. The Anti‑Personnel Mines Convention
III. The Convention on Cluster Munitions
IV. Controls on intangible transfers of technology and additive manufacturing
Materials that can sustain an explosive fission chain reaction are essential for all types of nuclear explosives, from first-generation fission weapons to advanced thermonuclear weapons. The most common of these fissile materials are highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium. This section gives details of military and civilian stocks as of the beginning of 2017 of HEU (see table 6.11) and separated plutonium (see table 6.12), including in weapons, and details of the current capacity to produce these materials (see tables 6.13 and 6.14, respectively). The information in the tables is based on estimates prepared for the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM). The most recent annual declarations on civilian plutonium and HEU stocks to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were released in late 2017 and give data for the end of 2016.
Smith, Dan. "6. World nuclear forces." SIPRI Yearbook. SIPRI. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. Web. 2 Feb. 2023. <https://www.sipriyearbook.org/view/9780198821557/sipri-9780198821557-chapter-6-div1-039.xml>.
Smith, D. (2016). 6. World nuclear forces. In SIPRI, SIPRI Yearbook 2018: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2 Feb. 2023, from https://www.sipriyearbook.org/view/9780198821557/sipri-9780198821557-chapter-6-div1-039.xml
Smith, Dan. "6. World nuclear forces." In SIPRI Yearbook 2018: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, SIPRI. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Retrieved 2 Feb. 2023, from https://www.sipriyearbook.org/view/9780198821557/sipri-9780198821557-chapter-6-div1-039.xml


text:
Q: Pack a multi-module Gradle library into a single module I've split my pancakes Gradle-based library written in Kotlin into multiple modules: pancakes-core, pancakes-addon1, ..., pancakes-addonN. The addon ones include the core one.
Now, most users shouldn't care and will just want the default configuration with all the dependencies included. But they will have to write boilerplate:
dependencies {
    implementation("pancakes:pancakes-core")
    implementation("pancakes:pancakes-addon1")
    ...
    implementation("pancakes:pancakes-addonN")
}

This is a no-go for me. I'll probably have to merge all the modules, although I've just spent some time to branch off some replaceable features into their own modules.
Unless! There is a way to write something like the following:
project(":pancakes-simple") {
    dependencies {
        autoForwardedApi(":pancakes-core")
        autoForwardedApi(":pancakes-addon1")
        ...
        autoForwardedApi(":pancakes-addonN")
    }
}

Unfortunately, api is not enough.

A: Yes it's possible and close to what you supposed it to look like.
Add a separate subproject, say, :pancakes-simple and configure its publishing as you did for your normal modules.
Then just add the dependencies that you want it to expose. If you are not using the java-library plugin, use the compile configuration:
project(":pancakes-simple") {
    dependencies {
        compile(":pancakes-core")
        compile(":pancakes-addon1")
        ...
        compile(":pancakes-addonN")
    }
}

Unlike implementation dependencies, these will be available on the consumer's compile classpath if they add a dependency on the pancakes-simple module.
With the java-library plugin, api dependencies should also work

A: java-library Gradle plugin is required for api dependencies to be forwarded from the current module. So that's how to pack all the modules into a single one:

*

*Add java-library plugin (and remove java) in all modules of the library

*Create a module like my :pancakes-simple that api-depends on all the other modules


Intuition is often one's first introduction to psychic seeing and understanding. The problem is, many people reject their own instincts. In doing so, they exhibit diminished appreciation for and acceptance of their Higher Consciousness. The result is fewer and fewer insights, intuitive promptings and instinctual nudges. However, if a person accepts their intuition, shows gratitude for it, and respects the wisdom it so often dispenses, then the ability grows and flourishes.
Developing a strong psychic ability is much like raising a healthy child: it requires dedication, love, acceptance, and plenty of positive reinforcement. It must also be done without the need to direct their (its) course. That, some may say, is the most difficult. If one is meant to be of service, the way will be shown.
You can try this to identify and hone your abilities: mix up a regular deck of playing cards, hold them in your hand face down, relax and concentrate. With your non-dominant hand, using any finger/s other than the forefinger or thumb, touch the back of the top card in the pile. You'll "hear" or sense red or black. Consciously choose which color the card is before turning it over, and when you do, make 3 piles – one pile of cards which you guessed correctly, one of cards which were incorrect, one where you first thought of the correct card but changed your answer. The 3rd pile will give you the most insight into where your intuition really lies, try to remember when you changed your mind, and how you felt then. Go through the deck at least once, or several times.
Practicing this for 5 or 10 minutes every day will help you hone your natural instincts. I'd suggest charting your progress: date, time spent, # right, # wrong, # changed your mind. Best of luck.
I think you want to help based on life experiences. Sometimes when we are caught in a relationship, it's hard to free ourselves. It takes support from family and friends. But like w/me talking about it is best. It's easier for us on the outside, it can be real torment when on the inside. Breaking away from the same patterns helps us. Being quite honest is the best I believe. Learning abusive patterns, learning victim's patterns helps.
A synonym for psychic–intuitive. We all have intuition. We must learn to make good choices. And every now and then, by the grace of God, I receive a signal grace that lets me know everything will be alright. Everything will be alright.
Thanks to Spiritbeing, diviningjoy, and dalia for information.