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A CNN correspondent covering the Baltimore anti-police riots live indicated rioters were openly hostile towards “anyone… who was not African-American.” (WATCH: Rioting Punk Taken Down By Baltimore Police)
CNN correspondent Miguel Marquez described the scene on the ground: “It was a frightening scene. Young people, male and female, holding rocks, bricks, bottles, sticks.”
“Very, very angry to see anybody driving in a rental car who was not African-American,” he reported, “and very, very threatening to us.”
Follow Alex Griswold on Twitter | {
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On 22 January 2019, CNBC reported that BTHMB Holdings, a Singapore-based crypto firm which holds a controlling stake in major crypto exchange Bithumb, is planning to acquire a publicly traded company in the U.S. as a ‘shortcut’ to go public in the country.
An unspecified source told CNBC that BTHMB Holdings had considered to go public through the traditional process of applying for an Initial Public Offereing (IPO), but decided to utilise a method capable of accelerating the process called a reverse merger instead. A reverse merger is the acquisition of a publicly listed company in order to make a private company public.
The reverse merger deal will be done between BTHMB Holdings and Blockchain Industries, a crypto and blockchain-focused investment firm. Blockchain Industries announced that both companies signed a binding letter of intent agreement, and once the deal passes through, the merged alliance will be named as Blockchain Exchange Alliance (BXA), becoming the first crypto exchange to go public in the U.S.
The move is very similar to that of Mike Novogratz’s method to get his crypto investment bank listed in Canada. He first bought a crypto start-up named Coin Capital and reverse merged with Bradmer Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian shell company. The alliance, now known as Galaxy Digital Holdings, trades on the TSX Venture Exchange.
The currently ongoing deal between BTHMB Holdings and Blockchain Industries, which is still under diligence review by related parties and have its terms and valuations finalized, is planned to be completed by 1 March 2019. Additionally, BTHMB Holdings agreed to place $1 million into an escrow account as a deal consideration, showing its immense interest in the reverse merge.
Both firms seek to gain benefits from the deal, with BTHMB Holdings hoping to expand its business premise to North America through the deal and Blockchain Industries aiming to bring better services for its users. Patrick Moynihan, the CEO of Blockchain Industries, stated that he expected the deal to provide the blockchain industry with “liquidity, accessibility and expansion”. He further added that the firm aimed to “bring more advanced technology and better compliance practices into the public marketplace” through the unification with BTHMB Holdings to form BXA. | {
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The Fog of War - Investigating a U.S. Airstrike on an Afghan Wedding Party
The recent bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan is reminiscent of a similar incident at the beginning of the war. On… | {
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× Expand Photo by Jon Anderson Whole Foods Market summer 2017 The 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market at 3780 Riverchase Village in Hoover, Alabama, is slated to open Oct. 18, 2017.
Whole Foods Market today announced the opening of its new store in Riverchase will occur on Oct. 18.
The company had not publicly announced an opening date other than "fall 2017," but the store had been slated to open today, according to a Hoover city official and a company that does business with Whole Foods. Now, the opening is scheduled to take place in three weeks instead.
Rachael Dean Wilson, a spokeswoman for the company’s mid-Atlantic and South regions, would not give any specific reasons for the delay but said there are a number of things that can happen in the development process to cause delays.
That shopping center, at the southeast corner of U.S. 31 and Lorna Road, has flooded several times this year during heavy rains, causing some stores to close for days at a time to allow for cleanup, restoration and sanitation. But Wilson would not comment further about the delay.
“We’re just excited to be opening on Oct. 18,” she said.
The Texas-based grocery chain first announced in November 2014 that it would put its second Birmingham-area store in Riverchase Village in the spot that for many years was home to a Bruno’s grocery store and later Belle Foods before Belle filed for bankruptcy in mid-2013.
Hoover Mayor Gary Ivey said in his December 2015 state-of-the-city speech that the store was expected to open in the mid-summer to fall of 2016, but those expectations were not met.
A $2.3 million job to demolish the Belle Foods store and construct a new shell was completed on time in February 2016, but an application for $3.4 million worth of interior construction work was not filed with the city until May 2016. Hoover issued a certificate of completion for interior improvements on Dec. 28.
David Ashford of Southpace Properties, which handles leasing for the shopping center, said Whole Foods signed a 20-year lease. The shopping center has been renamed Whole Foods Market Plaza.
Amazon announced on June 16 that it planned to acquire Whole Foods in a $13.7 billion deal.
Whole Foods Market plans to donate five percent of opening day sales for its Hoover store to REV Birmingham’s Urban Food Project, which aims to improve people’s access to healthy food.
The store also will offer an array of product demonstrations and samples to opening-day shoppers and give free gift cards ranging from $5 to $50 to the first 500 customers, plus one $500 gift card, the company said in a news release.
Whole Foods Market also is inviting the community to a block party in front of the new store on Sunday, Oct. 15, from 1 to 4 p.m. The party is scheduled to include music, activities for kids, food and product samples. Admission is free.
Jason Stonicher, the Riverchase store’s team leader, said in a news release that the store at 3780 Riverchase Village will feature many locally-sourced and seasonal products. Every item sold in the store will be free of artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners, preservatives and hydrogenated fats, the company said.
The 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market will include a Revelator coffee bar, Hops N Sauce beer and barbecue venue, grab-and-go barbecue bowls and gourmet soul food offerings such as buttermilk-smothered pork chops, fried catfish, maple roasted yams and burn end black-eyed peas.
Other specialties made in-house will include scratch-made Lane cake, a selection of meatballs, ready-to-cook breaded shrimp and hand-tossed, wood-fired pizzas. The store also will have a do-it-yourself beauty apothecary that allows customers to create their own beauty care regiments with ingredients such as lavender and shea butter in bulk.
The store plans to employ 120 people and is still hiring, Wilson said. People can apply for jobs at wholefoodsmarket.com/careers. Open positions for the Hoover store should be on the website by Wednesday, Sept. 27, Wilson said.
This story was updated at 1:37 p.m. to clarify that, prior to today, Whole Foods Market had not publicly announced an opening date other than "fall 2017." Information about the Sept. 26 target date came from a Hoover city official and a company that does business with Whole Foods. | {
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An analysis of book value captures things like plants and equipment and facilities and hard-money, real assets that corporations have managed to accumulate over their lifetimes.
And when the cost of money is higher, these things are more highly valued by investors because they are expensive to replicate and costly to replace.
An analysis of book value doesn’t capture things like intellectual property and brand, intangible assets that corporations have accumulated or are currently accumulating.
And when the cost of money is lower (or, effectively zero) as it is today, these things become more highly valued by investors than physical assets are because they are weapons that corporations can use to nullify the moats and assets of the incumbent corporations that they are competing with for customers, revenue and market share.
This is why a AirBnB is currently more highly valued than all of the publicly traded hotel chains on the NYSE.
This is why Uber is worth more than all of the auto makers and taxi companies that own their own fleets of cars.
It’s why WeWork, which leases floors from building owners, is worth more than those building owners’ corporations.
This is how it’s possible that Beyond Meat, with its sizzling hot brand, could be worth exponentially more than the other publicly-traded food processing companies, with their century-old supply chains and manufacturing operations and union relationships and supermarket shelf space privileges and trucking contracts.
This is why the CEO of Goldman Sachs laments the fact that if his company’s Marcus online bank was a standalone “social finance” company backed by venture capitalists, it would be worth significantly more.
As he says this, note that the Goldman Sachs share price has just slipped below its tangible book value again. In the meantime, here’s PayPal’s price to book value – it has doubled over the last two years:
Nobody cares about PayPal’s book value because the truly valuable aspects of PayPal’s business – its brand, its ubiquity on the phones of millennials and its technological savvy – are not captured in the calculation of this metric. They lease office space, and they take market share. They don’t build factories or erect smokestacks off the side of the interstate highway.
And as a result of this popular preference for asset-light, recurring revenue model companies, factor (or smart beta) strategies that weight portfolios by the stocks’ price-to-book value have badly trailed the market.
Capital is Now Free, Have Fun
I had dinner with one of the foremost authors and thinkers in the history of the investment markets, William Bernstein, earlier this year. At the end of the dinner, Jason Zweig asked Bernstein “What’s the one thing that’s on your mind that no one else at this table is talking or thinking about right now?”
Bernstein said he’d been thinking about the question “What if the cost of capital never rises again?” The implications of a world in which equity capital is flowing while interest rates on credit never rise to the level of being a serious roadblock for innovation are fascinating to consider. What if every new idea that comes along, no matter how world-altering and disruptive, no matter how unproven or risky, can get overnight funding without much of a problem? Masayoshi Son’s Vision Fund has been investing based on this premise. Massive pools of capital from sovereign nations and university endowments and gigantic corporations like Google’s moonshot division are investing this way as well.
This question is being answered on Wall Street every day, even if the participants are not aware of it. Their actions and allocations have already decided what we think this world would look like. Value stocks have appreciated significantly less than growth stocks in the post-crisis period that’s been marked by a cost of capital that has approached zero. Value stocks have underperformed the overall stock market and their size within the indices has declined as a percentage of the weighting of these indices accordingly.
Lines
Below, a ratio chart of the incredible underperformance of value vs growth – the IVE is made up of US large value stocks. Here, it’s divided by the IVW ETF, which holds large cap growth stocks:
Seen another way, here’s the IVW (growth) in blue leading the S&P 500 in red, with the IVE (value) in black trailing substantially.
These are not just lines on a chart.
They are responsible for the shifting of trillions of dollars in market cap from one group of companies to another.
They are responsible for the collapse of some of the greatest reputations in the investing business, and for the numerous closings of their funds.
These lines have caused divorces and broken marriages among the hedge fund elite, as aging 90’s superstars, who could once reliably bet against highfliers while overweighting cheaper stocks, found they no longer had a viable investment strategy after a decade of free money funding moat-busting disruption and heretofore unfathomable business models. You don’t go home to Greenwich from your Park Avenue office in a good mood when the market makes it a point to remind you of how vestigial your skills have become, day after day after day.
Lines on charts become lines on people’s faces in this game. They become dividing lines separating things that used to work from things that may work in the future. While these lines are merely made of keystrokes and digital ink, the trends they are emblematic of in the real world cause layoffs and pivots and fire sales and bankruptcies on Wall Street.
Everyone Likes a Bargain (in theory)
There are no asset managers who represent their strategy to clients as “We buy the most expensive assets, and add to them as they rise in price and valuation.” That’s unfortunate, because this is the only strategy that could have possibly enabled an asset manager to outperform in the modern era. It’s one of those things you could never advertise, but had you done it, you’d have beaten everyone over the ten-year period since the market’s generational low.
But almost every investment professional says that they do the opposite of this. Even the explicitly growth-oriented managers use terms like “at a reasonable price,” to communicate their place on the spectrum of speculative chastity. There are no textbooks lauding an investment approach where it makes more sense to buy PayPal at 4 times book on its way to 9 times book while forsaking Goldman Sachs at less than 1 times book.
New initial public offerings for companies worth billions of dollars with little or no history of profit-making or tangible book value growth are arriving every month now. Public companies with long histories of profitability and substantial tangible assets are being routinely met with investor apathy, unless and until they make their digital transformations the paramount part of their story (a la Walmart and Disney and McDonalds).
Customers are now being referred to as users, and, as such, commanding more respect (and capital) from the investor class as a result of doing so. Customers is an unsexy term, with the connotation that they must continually be sold to and “reacquired.” Users, on the other hand, mustn’t be reacquired because they are always there. I get a customer, I keep a user. “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.” Poor Romeo would be lost today. As inventive as he was, even William Shakespeare couldn’t have envisioned a society in which money was free. He died a century before the dawn of equity funding – in his day, it cost an average of 4 percent to borrow from either a British bank or a Medici money lender in the Italian nation states. In fact, the plot of The Merchant of Venice literally depends on the premise of capital having a cost attached to it. Shylock was ready to maim to collect the interest owed – his pound of flesh.
If Ford Motor were a savvier marketer of their stock, which has changed hands at more or less the same price for twenty years, they’d be calling buyers of their cars a user base and the cars themselves would be rechristened “physical mobility apps.” But they are dumb, and so Ford, with all of its heritage and legacy assets, is considered to be worth less than nothing by the modern marketplace for money and attention.
Bernstein’s Question
Bernstein’s question, left unanswered as all large and weighty contemporaneous questions about human civilization must be, introduces additional mysteries that we can only guess at.
Here are some additional questions I cannot answer:
Will “real” assets remain permanently undervalued relative to brand and intellectual capital forever?
Will the entire business of securities analysis institutionally restructure itself to account for this new reality, prizing other facets of a corporate issuer of securities more highly than projected cashflows and balance sheets?
What, if anything, could possibly come along to change the investor class’s attitudes about this?
Is it true that every time a purported “value investor” invents a justification for buying Amazon shares, an angel has its wings ripped off?
Do we simply need a recession for the old attributes of value stocks to shine through? What if that only makes it worse, given that in times of low cyclical growth, companies with high secular growth become even more sought after?
Would a sudden and long-term rise in the price of money and the cost of capital upend everything I’ve written here and completely reverse the lines on my chart, as a railroad worker throws the switch and sends itinerant trains onto completely different tracks?
Did I just call the top in the decade-long growth-versus-value massacre?
I don’t know the answers. You have opinions, but you can’t know for sure either. Maybe we need the last active pure-value manager on The Street to close up shop and retire as our signal. It’ll never happen. Even the buyers of stocks like Workday and ServiceNow and Zoom are convincing themselves that they’re playing a “relative” value game, and can always find things more obscene to point to in their quarterly virtue-signaling.
Paying Your Borrower
In 2016, I imagined the perfect startup business for this moment in time, not thinking back then that what I’d used as a parody would come closer to being a reality three years later:
Here’s the perfect business idea for this environment: Open a Hundred Dollar Bill Store™. You sell hundred dollar bills for ninety dollars each. You’ll lose ten dollars per transaction but you’ll do a trillion in revenues in year one. Maybe you show an ad to everyone who walks into the store and you break even. User growth with be on the order of 1000% per month. A billion users. You’ll be the biggest IPO of all time when Goldman’s underwriters get wind of that growth rate. Go public and let someone else worry about a competitor selling hundred dollar bills for eighty-five.
As ridiculous as that seemed at the time, it is today slightly less ridiculous, in a world where $20 trillion of the $55 trillion in global sovereign bonds currently yield zero percent or less. There is even a negative interest rate in same cases, with German citizens and other buyers paying the German government a quarter of one percent each year for the privilege of lending it money. What foul vision of unsurvivable torment, on earth or in hell, could the “investors” in these bonds possibly be running from when they consider the alternatives and decline?
Talk to a venture investor these days and they’ll tell you the single thing they don’t need more of is money. We have so much money in this new world we’re inventing new digital forms of currency just to have a place to stuff it all. Capitalists need ideas, talent, attention, audience, anything but more capital. Please don’t give me more. I can barely earn a lower-risk return on what I already have!
Which would you rather have?
Joking around with no one in particular, I asked which currently had more value – having a generic four-year degree from Anytown University, or an Instagram account with a million followers?
It was a Twitter survey and the results were what you’d have expected. Voters in the poll overwhelmingly chose the followers as having more value. Instagram doesn’t pay you a dollar for your follower count. It’s worth nothing on paper. But, as in most things in life, it can be an asset to you if you know how to use it. That right there is the intangible thing that everyone wants right now.
The following represents the power and reach of your brand. The college degree, in this analogy, is also an asset that you must make use of, but it is seen to be of substantially lower value given the ubiquity of young and middle-aged people in the labor force who also have one.
You’re a CEO in the financial sector. Which would you rather have as your corporation’s main asset, a chain of marble-floor main street bank branches or the payment network of Visa or Mastercard? We know what your potential shareholders would prefer you had. Here’s the regional bank stock ETF versus the interchange fee credit card giants, who collectively have zero bank branches despite being in the business of money changing hands and consumer borrowing:
Red is the regionals. Meh. Black and Green is Visa and Mastercard. The holy grail. And just for fun I snuck in Capital One Financial (in blue) – it’s in the credit card issuance game and the regional bank game, and still it’s done less than the S&P 500 since the crisis ten years ago.
In the battle for capital right now, the brands and intangibles and user bases and networks are winning by a landslide against the things that used to be important. And the companies that are rich in those old fashioned things, like Walmart, Disney and McDonalds, are spending all of their time and attention to transform themselves into the spitting image of their upstart competitors. Disney wants to look like Netflix, Walmart wants to retail like Amazon, McDonalds wants to be as habit-forming and celebrated for its freshness as its former protege Chipotle is. Goldman Sachs wants to grow up to be BlackRock. And in emulating these younger models, they hope, their multiples will soon be following suit.
And as for those stodgy old stalwarts of the 20th century that aren’t pursuing this transformation…it remains to be seen whether the rusty old assets they do possess will ever matter to investors ever again. | {
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Werders Sportchef Frank Baumann ist an einer Rückkehr von Innenverteidiger Per Mertesacker interessiert. (dpa)
Die Sommer-Transferperiode ist gerade erst vorbei, da arbeitet Werders Sportchef schon an dem Bremer Kader für die kommende Spielzeit. Gestern hatte Baumann bestätigt, weiterhin an Linksverteidiger Ludwig Augustinsson vom FC Kopenhagen interessiert zu sein. Nun hat der Sportchef einen weiteren Namen, der als künftige Abwehrverstärkung gehandelt wird, kommentiert. Im Zentrum der Spekulationen steht kein geringerer als Ex-Werderaner Per Mertesacker, 32, vom FC Arsenal.
"Es gibt noch nichts Konkrektes", räumte Baumann am Freitagmittag ein, sagte aber, dass "wir in den nächsten Monaten noch mal telefonieren werden". Dieses Jahr solle allerdings keine Entscheidung mehr über Mertesackers Zukunft gefällt werden, so Werders Sportchef. Zu Beginn des kommenden Jahres, spästestens bis zum Frühjahr 2017, könne man mit einem Entschluss von Mertesacker rechnen, sagte Baumann. Schließlich könne es auch gut sein, dass "es für ihn noch weitergeht bei Arsenal".
Seit Mertesacker vor Kurzem in einem Interview betont hatte, sich durchaus vorstellen zu können, seine Karriere auch in Deutschland ausklingen lassen, wird sein Name auch wieder in Bremen gehandelt. Nicht ganz zu unrecht, wie Baumanns Aussagen gegenüber der "Bild" nahegelegten. Im Zuge des Transfers von Serge Gnabry, zuvor ehemaliger Teamkollege von Mertesacker in London, habe er sich mit dem Ex-Bremer über dessen Zukunft unterhalten, so Baumann.
Baumann thematisierte die mögliche Verpflichtung vor allem vor dem Hintergrund der unklaren Zukunft der beiden Bremer Führungsspieler Clemens Fritz, 36, und Claudio Pizarro, seit dieser Woche 38 Jahre alt. "Bei Claudio und Clemens müssen wir abwarten, ob sie noch eine Saison weitermachen", sagte Werders Sportchef. "Beide sind wichtig für die Mannschaft. Per könnte eine solche Rolle übernehmen."
Drei Saisons spielte Mertesacker sogar noch gemeinsam mit Baumann in Bremen, insgesamt stand er von 2006 bis 2011 bei Werder unter Vertrag. Da sein Ex-Klub nicht der einzige Verein sein dürfte, der an einer Verpflichtung des Innenverteidigers interessiert ist, hat Baumann gegenüber der "Bild" sogar gleich noch ein Argument genannt, das Mertesacker zu einer Werder-Rückkehr bewegen soll: „Bei Werder könnte es für ihn die Möglichkeit geben, auch nach der Karriere dem Verein in irgendeiner Form verbunden zu bleiben“, sagte Baumann.
Mertesackers Vertrag in London läuft im Sommer 2017 aus. Noch soll unklar sein, ob die Londoner ihren Kapitän behalten möchten. Wegen einer Knieverletzung, die er sich in der Vorbereitung zugezogen hatte, fällt Mertesacker die gesamte Hinrunde aus. | {
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Департамен внутрішньої безпеки затримав начальника управління із захисту економіки Нацполіціі в Луганській області.
Про це повідомляє прес-служба поліції Луганщини.
"10% від щомісячного прибутку - стільки вимагав начальник Управління із захисту економіки Нацполіціі в Луганській області - за безперешкодне ведення місцевим підприємцем господарської діяльності", - йдеться у повідомленні.
Начальник вимагав 90 тисяч гривень.
Полковнику загрожує до 10 років ув'язнення з конфіскацією.
Українська правда | {
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Despite all the tall talk about India being an agricultural country and farmers’ issues being discussed during election season, in reality, agriculture is not economically viable today. The increasing demand for larger cities has driven up real estate prices even in remote villages, prompting farmers to sell their land. Adding to the fire is the lack of marketing and a fair price for the products.
But one man is trying to change this, and give villages and farmers an opportunity to sustain themselves. Venkat, who holds a bachelors degree from IIT Kharagpur and a masters from Alabama University in the US, came back to India to do something to help the country’s farmers.
“I was heading some big companies as vice president and earning well, but you see after some time [you realise] money does not mean everything. I wanted to come back to do something for India and I chose [to do something in the] agriculture arena. I studied what was wrong and realised marketing was the link missing.”
On his return to India, Venkat started a company called Efarm (enabling farmers to reach the market). With support from a Mumbai-based start-up funding firm, over a two-three year period Efarm soon transformed into a name to reckon with in the agricultural sector. But the going was not smooth.
“In India, lessons in agriculture are hard and if one learns them well he would never step into it again…as the adage says, once bitten twice shy. Though agriculture is a state subject, it is controlled by Centre. I was trying to do something productive and the local agri universities did their bit to support me by introducing me in their meetings, conferences but I [Efarm] was not taking off as expected. Adding to this was a host of other labour, supply and payment issues, and I thought I must end it somewhere here.”
After a two year hiatus, he re-entered the formal job market but found that he could not continue because the temptation to go back to Efarm was too much. He decided to give himself a second chance. This time he “carefully prepared lessons and revised them well so that my previous mistakes would not be repeated.”
Finding the middle path
Over the last decade, there has been a upsurge in the number of people like Venkat (from urban, non-agricultural backgrounds) taking to villages with a mission of doing something for farmers and resolving their problems.
A growing demand in cities for organic and chemical-free food was driving a spurt in online and offline stores that sell such products. Many social enterprises were being formed and the concept was being widely discussed to enable villagers to market their goods to cater to this demand.
Most of these efforts were driven by passionate individuals. But passion has an expiry date. These initiatives were either self-financed or charities, and soon they had to close. The lack of marketing and efficient distribution networks meant farmers couldn’t sell what they produced. No serious investor exhibitedan interest in most of these initiatives.
According to Venkat, rural enterprises are seen more as a philanthropic gesture than viable business models.
“Mahatma Gandhi, if alive today, would have had to change from his dhoti to a suit if he wanted to save the soul of rural India. If we need to put the ‘fun’ back in farming we need to create a new excitement and sustained returns that makes people desire to live in villages, not just going there on weekend trips or seeing it as a museum. We need money to draw people, not just for sentimental values and feeling good. We need to mix and match across successful ventures to weave the solution, learn and adapt as we grow. And replicate and scale across, urgently,” he stresses.
Most of the ‘unsolvable’ problems in today’s metro cities (traffic, garbage and sanitation) stem from a single root cause – the massive inflow of people, which chokes the cities. The big metros are nothing short of big slums, Venkat says.
He also says the IT revolution that put India on the world map caused more damage to the cities through the emergence of huge IT tech parks, rapid unplanned development, unreasonable salary differences, and the quest for an ‘easy lifestyle’.
“The Internet has made it easy for companies to work from anywhere. So where is the need to crowd around only in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai? They should decentralise and work from remote locations, to decongest cities,” Venkat says.
There are so many inspiring visions and models of smart villages across the country. “We don’t need to create anything new, we just need to pay attention to ‘creative restoration’. For example, a lot of my inspiration for the ‘smart village’ comes from Auroville in Puducherry and similar community initiatives,” he says.
The recipe would be a blend of different approaches and relate closely to the changing dynamics of todays urban-rural youth. The villager is strongly attracted to the city and is too bored to live in a village, whereas the urbanite is tired of ‘stressful city life’ and literally looking for greener pastures.
“Don’t try to preach or change them, let each follow their heart! The ideal solution lies somewhere mid-way. Farming has become a ‘boring’ word for many. The new smart village should have a little bit of everything to be fun, practical and sustainable and behind the curtains. Yes we still need farmers, but work smarter.”
Creating a smart village
Venkat outlines a four-step method to create a smart village. First, a central place must be chosen as a hub and person must be assigned to work with villagers. This person could be a wealthy local elder who is well respected and influential in his village or town. Having a local leader will generate more trust and support among the villagers. The hub should preferably be a pucca (proper) building that is centrally located in the village. The building should have a few guest rooms, a common room and dining area, and should be in a safe location.
Second, is the availability of basic infrastructure. Although many city dwellers want to experience rural lifestyle, they are accustomed to basic comforts like clean drinking water, fans, internet, TV, fridge, clean toilets, easy access to roads and public transport. People will prefer places that already have the basic infrastructure in place or that can be upgraded with minimum effort. A genuine village experience coupled with the availability of basic infrastructure could attract people to the village.
Third, is to encourage people to move to locations outside the city. With urban centres getting over crowded and expensive, many people will be willing to consider relocating. Working from rural locations will help startups widen their focus, and take up new challenging business domains and niche problems. This will also allow the firm to test the market before formally launching. Besides, as founders of startups usually prefer working round the clock to stabilise their projects, they are the ideal long-term tenants for the village hub building.
Finally, it is important to find the right kind of investors. Conventional investors may not be interested in people- or rural-centric projects. The ideal investor would be an ‘angel investor’ with a critical connection to the locality community. Tapping into CSR funding from a large corporate with a local presence is also an option. Additionally any government projects or funds for the area could augment the initial growth phase of the smart village.
The Efarm model
How does the smart village idea tie in with farming and village restoration?
The opening up of villages for multiple and mutually complementary uses gives projects a better chance of success. A single person, product or idea may fail, but collective efforts of multiple people with common focus stand a greater chance of survival.
The utilisation of the village infrastructure with a steady revenue inflow and permanent tenants will generate stability in the village, given the current focus on startups and ‘Make in India’, will create a magnetic effect. More people, money and resources will start flowing towards these village hubs. Startup firms will be more open to work with rural youth, train and mentor them to create a healthy ecosystem and generate local job opportunities.
As the kitchens in the village hubs will source produce grown locally, this will support local farmers immensely and provide them with a stable income.
Are such projects really feasible?
“We are currently in the early stages of discussion/feasibility study in some locations” says Venkat.
Those interested to try this concept in their places can contact Venkat at 09445490938 or [email protected] for more ideas and suggestions. | {
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Big Sean's lyrics in "Stay Down" was reportedly a major reason why he and Ariana Grande broke up. The tworecently split up earlier this week, which came as a big surprise since they've always looked pretty happy. According to TMZ, sources from the 21-year old singer's camp say the real reason Ariana called it quits was because of Sean's lyrics in "Stay Down." The Detroit native raps "I ain't even gonna lie, I got a million dollar chick/With a billion dollar p****y/Every time I c*m, I swear to God I feel like I be rich," on the track and Ari was not having it.
Apparently, the word choices made the pop singer feel like a piece of meat and she was embarrassed when her grandmother asked about the song. Rumors about their break up have been circulating recently, including Sean's dismay at having to foot all their bills. TMZ's sources say it was actually Grande who paid for all of their extravagances. There was also the rumor about Big Sean being upset that his girlfriend didn't come to his House of Blues performance in February. On the other hand, Grande says that the Dark Sky Paradise rapper was feeling himself just a little too much. She allegedly missed the performance because her vocal coach ordered her to rest her voice for her Grammy's performance the following day. There was also the incident regarding Grande's performance with Justin Bieber.
Take a listen to "Stay Down" below in case you need a recap.
Related: Watch Big Sean's Emotional Performance on 'Fallon'
Big Sean Gets Angry with Justin Bieber for Dancing with Ariana Grande | {
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In an interview celebrating his 2016, Lil Yachty revealed he doesn't know if he signed away his music publishing.
Lil Yachty sailed the seas of 2016 without his little boat being sunk. Yachty came into the new year riding the wave of “Minnesota” and “1 Night,” but how long that would last seemed rather uncertain.
Lil Boat proved naysayers wrong by staying afloat, even when his views of ‘90s hip-hop appeared to be the nail that would lead to a flooded ship. He topped charts with D.R.A.M., rapped alongside Chance, appeared in Kanye’s fashion show, signed a deal with QC, and has continued to be a voice of positivity for youthful fans of his animated rap music.
Yachty teamed up with The FADER to highlight all of his '16 accomplishments, an article that is meant to celebrate the newcomer’s last 12 months, but there’s one particular quote that has me worried about all the months yet to come.
“Before “Broccoli,” Rick Rubin emailed us. You know, he got a publishing company. I don’t think I signed my publishing. I don’t know who my publishing is signed to. I really don’t. But this year I met with everybody. Every label. So I went to Rick Rubin’s house in Malibu. There’s no nothing there — there’s just work. I got to record. That’s where I met D.R.A.M., working on his own stuff. We recorded “Broccoli” in L.A. It’s his song, but I’m glad to be a part of it.” - Lil Yachty Did So Much This Year
Hold up. Lil Yachty doesn't know if he signed away his publishing?
He recalls meeting with every label, getting offers from publishing companies like Rick Rubin’s Pulse Records, but completely draws a blank if his John Hancock was ever put to paper.
He’s signed to QC, it’s possible QC handles his publishing as well, especially if he signed a 360 deal. This is something he needs to know, publishing is a big part of how an artist generates revenue through their music. Next to touring, publishing brings in a lot of much-needed bacon.
For example, Yachty’s “Minnesota” is featured in a Sprite commercial—that’s a publishing check. How much money he’s able to make from that opportunity is largely dependant on how much of his publishing he potentially signed away.
Yachty’s popularity may be coasting now, but nothing is certain in this industry. If your business isn’t in order you risk being completely taken advantage of. Being taken advantage of means that all your money might not be accounted for, and when that happens, your well can quickly run dry. Yachty is already in commercials, and with the popularity of “Broccoli,” he’s looking at another huge publishing split with D.R.A.M.
Think about Yachty’s cartoonish voice, it’s perfect for animation—I can see cartoons and animated films wanting to use his music. This isn’t about his career, this is about his livelihood, and securing a financial future that will keep his lil boat floating down the river.
Chance The Rapper did an excellent job explaining masters and publishing for anyone who needs an explanation from a fellow artist. Earlier this year, DJBooth ran an article also explaining what exactly publishing means. It’s a rather insightful read into the publishing world and how artists, companies, and labels work within the publishing business.
For up-and-coming artists especially, this information is vital. Understand your worth, and know what you’re signing away when acquiring these deals.
Don’t be like Lil Yachty, kids. Always be on top of your business. This industry is cutthroat, they will take all you have and all that you could make if given half the chance.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Yachty's "1 Night" was featured in his Sprite commercial. The correct song is "Minnesota."
***
By Yoh, aka $Yoh$$$, aka @Yoh31.
Photo Credit: Shaina Walker | {
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After languishing for nearly a year in a congressional committee with two other H1B visa reform bills, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to send the “Protect and Grow American Jobs Act” to the full House chamber.
This bill introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa Darrell Edward IssaDCCC reserves new ad buys in competitive districts, adds new members to 'Red to Blue' program Wife of former Rep. Duncan Hunter sentenced to 8 months of home confinement Harris endorses Democrat in tight California House race MORE (R-Calif.) is similar to the other two bills in that it seeks to ensure American companies take the long view by training and hiring American workers, rather than chasing the quick fix — specifically importing workers from South Asia and damaging our long-term economic prospects in the process.
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Issa’s bill addresses H1B visa abuse raising the minimum salary of an H1B visa holder to $90,000 per year and by prohibiting those American companies, whose workforces are at least 20 percent comprised of H1B visas holders, from replacing American workers with foreign worker.
These measures represent a good start, but while the committee deserves applause for moving the bill forward, we remain in a race against time. This is especially true in the tech industry, where the need for qualified workers remains great and vast pools of potential workers remain shut out of the game.
We’re seeing jobs go to H1B visa holders every day. These are jobs that with some formal training could be performed by veterans, displaced blue-collar workers, older workers cut off from their careers, and women returning to the workforce after taking time to raise children. In fact, earlier this year Goldman Sachs estimated that foreign nationals with H1B visas hold nearly one million jobs in the U.S., including at least 12 percent of all tech industry jobs.
At one time, the H1B program served a worthy purpose, providing growing companies the ability to hire foreign workers who possess a specific technical skill the company couldn’t find in its pool of American applicants.
That‘s capitalism; it’s how the global market works at its best. What we’re seeing now, though, is widespread exploitation of the H1B program as an across-the-board cost cutting strategy.
The practice of importing, en masse, foreign IT workers led to the 2014 layoff of 18,000 Microsoft employees and Hewlett Packard’s jettisoning of nearly 85,000 workers over 2015 and 2016. Yet, importing IT workers doesn’t save much money in the short run, and in the long run, it’s a losing strategy.
For instance, only a small percentage of all H1B visa holders in the tech industry can get green cards each fiscal year and stay permanently, resulting in a lack of continuity that damages corporate culture, morale, and quality.
How can a short-term worker on an H1B visa, most likely working for a foreign-based staffing agency, represent a brand with the same level of pride and care as a company employee with local roots?
Even when putting these considerations aside, there is the productivity factor. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that American workers — who from a young age, have learned the importance of creative problem-solving, teamwork and initiative — create more value.
In fact, American workers produce up to twice as much output as their foreign counterparts. The idea that foreign IT workers are cheaper is a fallacy. At a time when we’re seeing a sea-change in the nature of IT work, from rote repetitive task-oriented assignments to automated programming and data management, we’re also seeing a profound need for workers who are flexible and embrace challenge.
This need will only grow as technologies such as blockchain, Internet of Things, artificial learning and 3D printing become ubiquitous and central to a company’s ability to compete.
If American industry is going to remain the epicenter of innovation by taking full advantage of next-generation enterprise technology, we’ll need IT workers at all levels who can thrive in a perpetually shifting business environment. The bi-partisan nature of the H1B bills, including bills similar to Rep Issa’s introduced by Rep Zoe Lofgren Zoe Ellen LofgrenTop Democrats call for DOJ watchdog to probe Barr over possible 2020 election influence DHS opens probe into allegations at Georgia ICE facility House passes legislation to boost election security research MORE (D-Calif.) and by Sens. Chuck Grassley Charles (Chuck) Ernest GrassleyCollins says she will vote 'no' on Supreme Court nominee before election The Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by Facebook - Trump, GOP allies prepare for SCOTUS nomination this week Gardner signals support for taking up Supreme Court nominee this year MORE (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin Richard (Dick) Joseph DurbinTumultuous court battle upends fight for Senate McConnell focuses on confirming judicial nominees with COVID-19 talks stalled Senate Republicans signal openness to working with Biden MORE (D-Ill,) is extremely telling.
There is a mainstream desire not to end the H1B program, but rather restore it to its original intent. The common themes in these bills are also common sense. They increase the minimum salary for H1B visa holders, enforce the requirement that these workers must possess a skill that employers can’t readily source from the American worker pool, limit the number of H1B visas that go to companies with more than 50 employees, and prohibiting certain companies from replacing American workers.
Of her bill, which increases the minimum H1B worker salary to $130,000, allocates 20 percent of the visas to startups and eliminates per country caps for workers with unique skillsets, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said, “It offers a market-based solution that gives priority to those companies willing to pay the most. This ensures American employers have the access to the talent they need, while removing incentives for companies to undercut American wages and outsource jobs.”
Will H1B visa reform prevent companies from hiring the talent they need? No. However, it will compel them to think carefully about which needs they can satisfy exclusively by bringing in foreign specialists. It will also mean that they will have to invest in the types of recruiting programs and technical training models that unleash American workers to do what they do best: Produce.
Harley Lippman is CEO of Genesis 10, a professional technology services firm and one of the nation’s largest domestic IT staffing firms. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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An executive at a fast food chain where a teenager suffered a fatal reaction to a burger has told the inquest into his death that he should have asked about allergens when he ordered it.
Owen Carey died after eating a chicken burger that contained buttermilk at the Byron restaurant at the O2 Arena in Greenwich, southeast London, where he was celebrating his birthday with his family. He was allergic to dairy.
The 18-year-old began experiencing symptoms after leaving the restaurant on 22 April 2017 but got as far as the London Eye, near Waterloo in central London, before collapsing. He died at nearby St Thomas’s hospital 45 minutes later.
Southwark coroners court heard on Thursday that Carey had ordered a skinny grilled chicken burger with no sauce from the O2 Byron branch. The menu did not mention that the chicken was marinated in buttermilk, the court was told.
A postmortem showed he had suffered an anaphylactic reaction.
Clodagh Bradley QC, representing Carey’s family, from Crowborough, East Sussex, argued the omission could make a customer believe it was a plain chicken breast. Bradley also suggested that allergy information, which at the time was positioned on the back of the menu, was difficult to read, pointing out that it was in black print against a blue background.
But Aimee Leitner-Hopps, Byron’s technical manager, who is responsible for ensuring teams are fully trained in food safety, said that allergy information on the menu met industry standards at the time.
“If you have an allergy you should be asking for information and the team would be able to provide that information in the allergy guide,” she said.
“I think most businesses were taking the same approach that the customer would inform the restaurant about (their) allergies,” she said, adding the restaurant had been visited by local authority officials many times over the years and had never been told the wording was not clear enough or was too small.
Leitner-Hopps said all staff at the time received online allergen training, which required them to tick different sections, along with on-site training. “It was apparent to me training available to the teams was sufficient,” she said.
Nevertheless, since the incident, and following research showing one in 10 people aged 16 to 24 hide their allergies, staff now ask customers directly if they have any allergies or dietary requirements, she said.
When customers reveal an allergy, staff press a button that highlights the word “allergen” on the order ticket, along with space for more details, the inquest heard. Staff are then expected speak directly with the kitchen team to ensure the allergy information has been received.
Coroner Briony Ballard said she would not read out the report of the restaurant’s head chef as the “error” appeared to lie at the “point of ordering and not at the back of the house”.
Carey had been due to visit the Sea Life Aquarium after visiting the Star Wars exhibition at the 02 Arena earlier in the day. He usually carried an EpiPen but had forgotten it.
The inquest continues. | {
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XSEED Games has confirmed that it will release Fate/EXTELLA Link for Switch and PC via Steam alongside PlayStation 4 and PS Vita versions when the game launches in the west in Q1 2019.
The previously announced $79.99 “Fleeting Glory” edition for PlayStation 4 will be released for Switch as well. It includes a soundtrack CD, a pack of 10 collectible 3-inch by 5-inch cards depicting each of the new Servants, a 17-inch by 24-inch cloth poster, and a 3-inch by 4.5-inch acrylic diorama featuring the Servants Nero, Drake, and Scathach, all housed in a custom box.
Here is an overview of the game, via XSEED Games:
About Picking up right where the 2017 smash hit Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star left off, Fate/EXTELLA Link adds 10 Servants to the original roster of 16. The high-speed action gameplay fans have come to know and love has been even further refined as players are tasked with battling their way through massive armies to protect the virtual world of SE.RA.PH at all costs. As in the PlayStation 4 version, players on Nintendo Switch and Steam will be able to engage in grand-scale four-on-four online battles with up to 7 other players. Foes will quiver at the True Name of each opposing player’s Noble Phantasm as they assume the roles of their favorite Servants. Key Features Combatants from Across the Fate Universes Join the Fray – In addition to the 16 original Servants from Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star, 10 characters from other Fate series will enter battle as playable Servants, including Astolfo, Scáthach, and Francis Drake.
– In addition to the 16 original Servants from Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star, 10 characters from other Fate series will enter battle as playable Servants, including Astolfo, Scáthach, and Francis Drake. Hunker Down in Base Camp – Players can move freely around their army’s base camp—a medieval cathedral raised into the sky—and interact with their Servants to build meaningful bonds.
– Players can move freely around their army’s base camp—a medieval cathedral raised into the sky—and interact with their Servants to build meaningful bonds. Polished Graphics and Battle Mechanics – Players can experience refined combat mechanics and graphics throughout every part of the gameplay experience.
View a new set of screenshots at the gallery. | {
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It’s been another (very) busy week over at MyBit. The team have been working away on a massive update for the website. Almost every aspect has been refreshed and brought up to date with new content and a completely new design.
We’ve got a brand new ‘how it works’ page, showing how the MyBit ecosystem works together. It’s a handy guide that takes what can be a complex idea and makes it easy to understand. We’ve added new animations and video throughout the site too, making the whole experience much more engaging.
We’ve also integrated Typeform across the site, meaning no more Google forms. Instead, you can sign up seamlessly and intuitively for exactly what you want: Meetups, Alpha updates and Asset Manager information.
The footer of the website has been redesigned to include new resources, including a reworked white paper. And the entire site has been updated for a seamless, responsive experience on mobile.
“We’ve saved the best till last”
But we’ve saved the best till last: today we launch our new brand film. It’s an inspirational video setting out our vision for the future — and how MyBit hopes to change the world. It’s going to take pride of place on our website landing page.
Some of you may be interested to know what went on behind the scenes. This film is the result of many months of work and one part of a wider push at MyBit to raise the bar of marketing in the blockchain space.
It started with some serious thinking about MyBit’s mission. We were inspired by the now famous Simon Sinek talk about how the best brands are purpose driven. His main point is that most organisations are good at telling you what they do and how they do it. But very few are good at telling you why they do what they do. Yet the brands that have a good brand story — think Apple, Nike, Tesla — have perfected the why. Watching his talk, it can sometimes seem like this big brand thinking hasn’t reached the crypto space yet. This week, we’re taking our brand to a whole new level.
“This week, we’re taking our brand to a whole new level.”
To bring it to life, we partnered with Video4commerce , a leading production company from the Netherlands, even flying them over to Crypto Valley Labs in Switzerland to meet the team. There we brainstormed ideas, making sure the director truly understood MyBit’s culture and mission. The high production values show just how much we value our brand story.
We think the result is something pretty special. Check it out!
Yes the video has Easter eggs…
Don’t forget to share this video to as many people as possible and help spread MyBit’s story.
As always, feel free to reach out to us on Discord, Telegram or Reddit with any questions or thoughts.
Have a great weekend!
Team MyBit | {
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Chinese authorities say police have arrested 15,000 people on suspicion of cybercrime, including hacking, online fraud and illegal sale of personal information.
The Ministry of Public Security said on Tuesday that police have investigated more than 7,400 cases of alleged online crimes, leading to the arrests. It did not say when the arrests were made.
Authorities launched a six-month special operation to "clean the internet" in July, amid a growing crackdown on public dissent.
The ministry said the special operation has snared suspects who hacked into websites of companies, banks and government agencies.
Some obtained personal information illegally, some altered web information or uploaded content related to online gambling, and some used the internet to defraud others, it said.
China also prosecutes improper online speech, although the ministry's announcement did not list cases involving that.
Possible causes
Xiao Qiang, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information in California, told Al Jazeera he had never seen a crackdown on cybercrime at this level in China.
It was possible that some of those arrested could be activists, with cases related to freedom of expression, he said.
"The general atmosphere is very tight when it comes to freedom of speech," Xiao said.
He said the announcement of the mass arrests, which come amid a public outcry over the August 12 explosions at a warehouse that killed more than 100 people in Tianjin, could also be as an indirect warning against dissent.
The reported arrests come just three days after the Cyberspace Administration of China - the country's main internet watchdog - said that it shut down 18 news websites indefinitely and temporarily suspended 32 other sites for "spreading false rumours" about the Tianjin blasts and "inciting panic".
China has been accused of responding harshly to allegations that government mismanagement led to the disaster in the port city.
The Associated Press news agency says at least one person has been detained for allegedly reporting an exaggerated death toll of the blasts.
Crackdown on lawyers
Earlier, more than 200 Chinese lawyers, bloggers and activists were targeted in what Amnesty International, the international human-rights monitor, called an "unprecedented" spree of detentions and police questioning.
The public security ministry was cited as calling Beijing's Fengrui Law Firm - a prominent practice with leading human rights lawyers - a "major criminal gang" that had engaged in "disturbing social order."
The People's Daily reported that the crackdown began when the public security ministry looked into the actions of two activists, later broadening their investigation.
"The Chinese authorities must end their assault on human rights lawyers," Amnesty International said last month after more than 50 lawyers and activists were targeted by police since July 9.
Since the crackdown, a group of prominent lawyers in Hong Kong has launched a global petition to denounce what it calls the "intimidating harassment" of lawyers by authorities.
With reporting by Ryan Rifai | {
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TERMINALLY ill five-year-old Bradley Lowery led his Sunderland heroes out at the Stadium of Light against Chelsea on Wednesday night - and since has received 28,000 Christmas cards.
Huge Black Cats fan Bradley was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma in 2013 - and his story has captured the hearts of the football world and beyond.
2 Battling Bradley Lowery, seen here with his idol Jermaine Defoe, has a rare form of cancer Credit: PA:Press Association
Keep up to date with ALL the Premier League news, gossip, transfers and goals on our club page plus fixtures, results and live match commentary
A Christmas card campaign started by an Everton fan has seen the youngster receive thousands of cards from around the world as football fans united behind him in support.
His parents say his wish is to get as many Christmas cards as possible as truckloads of Royal Mail vans arrive at his house with cards and over 75 parcels containing gifts.
2 Bradley Lowery scores a penalty and many want him to be awarded the goal of the month Credit: Reuters
Sport stars such as Arsenal midfielder Granit Xhaka and even former Prime Minister Tony Blair sent cards.
A Twitter hashtag #BradleyLoweryForGoaloftheMonth has been set up as fans call for the youngster to be given the Premier League goal of the month award for his penalty against Blues keeper Asmir Begovic in the warm-up - and Chelsea striker Michy Batshuayi has got behind the campaign.
#SAFC fan Bradley Lowery, who is terminally ill, receives 11,000 Christmas cards after @Everton fan starts campaign pic.twitter.com/J5C2NSrDc8 — BBC Look North NE&C (@BBCLN) December 13, 2016
Mum Gemma said: "They have come in from Australia, New Zealand and all over the UK."
A message on the Facebook page set up to help Bradley read: "Can I just say up to now the response has been immense and we cant thank everyone enough for your kind words.
"We look forward to reading your kind words with Brad and the gifts and money he has received is fantastic.
Congrats @Bradleysfight 💙 already the same number of goals as me hahaha!!! 😂😂🙈 Hope you will be the PL goal of the month too 🙏 #Respect 🙏 https://t.co/AaaxdG0L2E — Michy Batshuayi (@mbatshuayi) December 15, 2016
"We want to say a huge thank you to you all for helping make Bradley's Christmas the most memorable ever."
After two-years of chemotherapy, Bradley was effectively free of cancer and for 18 months - but more than £700,000 was raised for hin to have antibody treatment in New York, with Everton pledging £200,000.
Let's help Bradley Lowery win @PremierLeague Goal of the Month! ⚽️
Use #BradleyLoweryForGoalOfTheMonth and RT!
https://t.co/PlUFNqPf0t — Soccer AM (@SoccerAM) December 15, 2016
But the cancer returned in June. Last week, Gemma revealed treatment would only give him more time.
Gemma also revealed that the latest treatment will mean he won’t be able to mix with people over the coming weeks to protect his low immune system.
If you want to send a card to Bradley, you can. Send them to 5 Attlee Avenue, Blackhall Rocks, Hartlepool TS27 4BY. | {
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国際情報
仮に伴侶と共に受けることになったら「緊張」を強いられるのは間違いないだろう。中国の情勢に詳しい拓殖大学海外事情研究所教授の富坂聰氏がレポートする。
＊ ＊ ＊
大学入試から昇進試験、運転免許に各種資格試験など、世の中には様々な試験があふれている。だが、「離婚試験」などと言われて、すぐにピンとくる者はいないだろう。5月23日付『人民日報』によると、まさに離婚試験なるものが中国に登場したというのだ。
中国でも近年、離婚する夫婦が増え、そのことがちょっとした社会問題にもなっているのだが、これもそうした傾向への一つの対処法なのかもしれない。
試験を取り入れたのは、江蘇省の東海民生局。導入の目的は、離婚を考えている夫婦が本当に修復不可能なのか否かを判断することだという。
試験の設問は、「妻（もしくは夫）の誕生日は？」、「結婚記念日はいつ？」、「子供の誕生日は？」、「妻の好きな食べ物は？」、「これまで夫婦（もしくは家族）で何度旅行に行ったか？」といった簡単な穴埋め問題が10問。これが各4点。
続いて簡単な記述問題が4問。各10点。記述の設問は、「夫婦の思い出で最も記憶に残っていること、もしくは幸せを感じたことについて書け」とか、「現在、夫婦が直面している問題で最も重大なものは何か」などである。
そして三番目が、一問20点の問題で、「あなたは現在のあなたの家庭と結婚についてどういう考えを持っているのか。また離婚を求める理由と、今後どうするつもりなのかについて書け」というもの。面白いのは本格的な試験のように各設問に回答時間の制限が設けられ──最初の10問と次の4問はそれぞれ40分ずつ──ていることだ。
さて、それでこの試験の結果をどう扱うのかという点だが、記事によれば夫婦ともに60点を取れていれば、「まだ修復可能」との判断基準になるという。どこまで信用できるのか疑問が残るが、概して男性の点数が低いというのには納得できる。 | {
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It is important to call your contact lens fitter immediately if you should experience any of the following abnormal symptoms:
Pain : when placing lenses on the eyes, while wearing the lenses, or after removing them
: when placing lenses on the eyes, while wearing the lenses, or after removing them Burning , a sensation of heat, redness, excessive tearing, or discharge
, a sensation of heat, redness, excessive tearing, or discharge Inability to keep the eyes open
Extreme sensitivity to light
to light Severe or persistent haze , fog, or rainbows around lights
, fog, or rainbows around lights Severe irritation
White spots on the cornea
By complying with the recommended care regimen, recognizing the early signs and symptoms of adverse reactions, and seeking professional care immediately if any complications do arise, patients with keratoconus should be able to look forward to many years of successful contact lens wear. Just a few minutes of lens care each night can ensure a lifetime of success.[schema type=”book” url=”http://localhost/dcer_nkcf_rebuilt/abnormal-symptoms/” name=”Abnormal Symptoms” description=”If you are experiencing any of the following symptoms, make sure you contact your lens fitter immediately.” author=”Catherine Warren” ] | {
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Florida Art Teacher Arrested After Punching Student
Fools in this world are coming out in droves. It seems that an art teacher at a Florida high school, has been arrested for punching a foul mouthed student. The kid seems to have cussed the teacher out, so in response, he got the old one, two punch.
According to a Hernando County Sheriff’s Office arrest report, 64-year-old Sandra Hadsock was arrested Wednesday after taking two or three swings at a student in the hallway. The student received a minor injury on his lip.
Fox News
At the time of the incident, other students pulled the boy away from the teacher.
Joe Vitalo, president of the Hernando Classroom Teachers Association says Hadsock maintains she acted in self-defense. Vitalo says the incident was captured by a cell phone camera.
Hadsock will be suspended with pay pending a school district investigation. Hadsock was arrested on a charge of child abuse without causing great bodily harm. The arrest report states she refused to cooperate with a deputy. Child abuse? Ah BS. Although wrong perhaps and against the law, the kid got what he deserved. Today, kids have more rights that adults. | {
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Welcome to Heroes Three episode 17 with guest Mike Dent! This week we are taking a look at episode 3 of the 70s sentai series JAKQ Dengekitai (1977) featuring guest star Etsuko Shihomi.Tokusatsu releases from Generation Kikaida and Shout Factory | {
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Terri Leigh Cox, 17, says that she saw something hunched over and bounding around on all fours from her bedroom window in Dorchester, Dorset, and took a photograph of it on her mobile phone. The teenager said that the park's visitor, which she insisted was not a dog or cat, then ran up a tree and out of sight. | {
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It is important to understand the genesis of the present round of violence between Israel and Hamas, really between Israel and the people of Gaza.
Both President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and the American news media have consistently described the conflict as Israel justifiably responding to the firing or rockets into Israel by Hamas and protecting their citizens, as if world history only began at this moment and that prior context did not exists.
More thoughtful and better informed observers than Obama and Kerry have more correctly noted that the present waves of Hamas rockets was preceded by a sequence of events which left Hamas with little choice except to resist with their only available means, which is firing rockets into Israel.
Let us recall: On June 2, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas announced the completion of an agreement unifying the two governments and to be led by the moderate Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and with ministries run mostly by technocrats, a process worked out with input from the American government which included terms that would not automatically trigger a US ban.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, however vowed never to work with a government that included Hamas which he described, as is normal for him, as a ‘terrorist’ organization and also admonished western governments including the US not to conduct discussions with them, a call that went mostly unheeded, to Mr Netanyahu’s great frustration.
The abduction and murder of three Israeli youths was met by Mr Netanyahu’s response: “Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay.” This was his chance to wreck the unity government.
Thus a ‘search and destroy’ operation was initiated consisting of 18 days of Israeli army rampages which targeted anything affiliated with Hamas on the West Bank. Hundreds were arrested, about 500 total, and about a dozen Palestinians killed, Hamas offices and clinics were ransacked and destroyed, with computers confiscated, hundreds of Palestinian homes were invaded, usually in the middle of the night with the homes ransacked and contents destroyed or damaged, guns were pointed at women and children and people terrorized, and many arrested. Homes of so-called suspected persons were blown up and destroyed.
In addition, Mr Netanyahu’s rhetoric contributed to an atmosphere of anger and vengeance which resulted in the abduction and burning alive of a Palestinian teenager by several Israelis.
As of almost three weeks later, there has been no evidence what so ever that the Hamas leadership was involved or even knew in advance about the kidnapping.
Furthermore Max Blumenthal has reported, based on his sources inside Israeli intelligence, Shin Bet, that they knew, with high probability, within hours of the kidnapping that the three abducted youths had been killed. This news was not released to the public thus permitting the ‘search and destroy’ operation to continue.
The rampage of Israeli soldiers in the west Bank was quickly followed by aerial attacks by Israel into Gaza which killed seven Hamas members.
Thus the charge, by Mr Netanyahu, of Hamas responsibility in the abduction and killing of the three Israelis, and the suppression of information to the effect that the Israeli government knew the three Israeli youths had been killed were disingenuous techniques of Mr Netanyahu to destroy or seriously degrade Hamas and destroy the unity government which Mr Netanyahu so despised.
Obama, Kerry, and Netanyahu and their minions constantly repeat the question. “What would you do if your country were attacked by rocket fire?” And, of course, there is the ever present refrain, “Israel has a right to defend itself”
A far less trite question is, “What would you do if you were Hamas, and your offices were being ransacked and destroyed, and your people killed.? And what would you do if the population of Gaza were living under a brutal siege, unable to export their agriculture or the products so their labors, with foodstuffs embargoed allowing only a bare subsistence, with electricity and fuel limited, and potable water in short supply, and with building and rebuilding of destroyed structure from two previous wars with Israel, as well as this one when it ends, impossible because of the Israeli siege?
All this is taking place in the political-diplomatic space created by the multiple failures of the Obama conflict resolution efforts which included sending Kerry to the Middle East with the instructions to ‘solve the problem’, as he had George Mitchell before, without any presidential directive or program toward a solution. Further, the efforts of Kerry were undermined, as were those of Mitchell’s earlier, by President Obama’s failure to apply any pressure at all to Israel and even to echo the narrative and talking points of the Israeli government and to repeat the Israeli-Zionist interpretation of Jewish-Zionist history and its justification for the Zionism project.
And, of course, there is the ever present refrain which Obama, like his predecessor George Bush, never tires of repeating: “Israel has a right to defend itself”, thus justifying Israel’s violent operation, both in 2012 and at present, which has been interpreted by the President as a ‘response’. Obama has advanced the argument that no nation could tolerate rocket fire aimed toward its citizens further justifying Israel’s air, land and sea attack on the people of Gaza, and implying that the cause of the present conflagration began with the Hamas launched rocket fire – that Hamas is responsible for the present round of violence.
Obama has never hinted at the slightest discomfort of the siege of Gaza in which at least half of Gaza’s 1.7 million people are food insecure and almost all are impoverished unable to export the products of their labors, nor to import enough of their material needs, including the need to upgrade their water and sanitation facilities. Though Obama is a constitutional lawyer, he seems not to have noticed that collective punishment as well as using food as a weapon of war violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Obama’s vetoes of all Palestinian sponsored UN Security Council resolutions which were critical of Israel or its occupation, his efforts to join Israel in quashing the Goldstone Report and rendering it ineffective, and his efforts to pressure the Palestinians not to seek memberships in UN Agencies or join international conventions, certainly undermined any possibility of Israel making an effort at compromise. Why should Israel compromise when the President of the United States as well as the US Congress will protect it from the pressures or constraints of international law, and also echo its talking points for general popular consumption.
Obama has sought to confine the possible avenues of potential resolution to the so-call ‘peace process’ and to the principle that any resolution must be one mutually agreed to by Israel and the Palestinians, which means that any constraints potentially imposed by international law will not be applied to Israel which occupies the land captured in the ’67 War and has a large and very well equipped military making it capable of occupying the land against the will of the Palestinian people for an indefinitely long period in to the future.
Everyday Israel seizes more Palestinian land, adds new settlers to the East Jerusalem and the West Bank population, and its leaders, particularly Prime Minister Netanyahu, has indicated very many times that the state of Israel has absolutely no intention of relinquishing any substantial amount of West Bank territory or any of East Jerusalem. Such indications includes a meeting of Mr Netanyahu with President Obama in the Oval Office in which Netanyahu told Obama to his face that Israel would never withdraw from ‘Judea and Samaria’, the Jewish nationalist designation of the West Bank. And that Israel must maintain an indefinite military presence in the Jordan Valley.
Obama acts as though he did not hear him, or doesn’t care. And his response to Mr Netanyahu, on that afternoon in the Oval Office, was complete silence.
Obama has done nothing but reinforce Mr Netanyahu’s argument that the occupied territories are not illegally occupied but are “disputed areas” subject only to negotiations between parties in to which Israel has as much right as anyone else. He has certainly never attempted to counter Mr Netanyahu’s frequent claim that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews by virtue of ‘the Jewish historical right’.
During Obama’s five and half years in office, Obama has never displayed any insight at all in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nothing beyond the echoing of the Israeli-Zionist narrative. He has never used the term Nakbah, nor recognized that there was an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948, though he did use the term “dispossession” in his (overrated) Cairo speech. I have never heard him use the term “occupation”.
His only insight into the Zionist movement is to echo the false claim that Jews dreamed and hoped for 2000 years to return to the Land of Israel. This mythology has been thoroughly debunked by Shlomo Sand and by any careful reading of the history of the Zionist movement – a movement which only became a project of Jews, and a small subset of Jews at that, in the 1880’s though it was preceded by four centuries by Christian Zionism, mostly in England, which set the parameters of Jewish Zionist thinking and introduced the term return to describe the migration of Jews into Palestine.
It is doubtful anyone would use the term “return” if the Egyptians decided to conquer Palestine though they ruled it a millennium before there was a Jewish city state in Jerusalem.
This war belongs to Obama as much as to anyone because it emerged in the vacuum created by Obama’s laziness and lack of courage in standing up to Netanyahu and the Zionist supporters in the US and in Congress.
Obama ignored the seven year long siege of Gaza. Now it has come back to bite him. His legacy will include that.
Given Obama’s limited shallow understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its history, there may have been little else he could have done. Imagining Obama conducting a 13 day debate with Netanyahu, as Jimmy Carter did in 1978 at Camp David with Menachem Begin, is completely unimaginable.
Hamas and the people of Gaza can give up and let Israel slowly strangle them to death under a siege that stands in clear violation of international law which prohibits collective punishment. Or they can fight back with their only means available.
Hamas’s fight, which is mainly a struggle to lift the siege of Gaza, is an honorable one. Hamas’s fight possess the dignity with the Israeli brutalizers cannot not even imagine. In fact, the Zionists gave up any hope of dignity long before they ethnically cleansed Palestine of most of its indigenous population in 1948. | {
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Much like some of the similar Portugiesers that IWC has made for other boutiques around the world, the Portugieser Boutique Canada is a rattrapante chronograph and uses IWC’s hand-wound reference 76240. Based on an ETA 7750, the 76240 is highly modified and uses a special module (originally developed by the illustrious Richard Habring) to add the double chronograph feature. Activated by the pusher at 10 o’clock, the first chronograph seconds hand is in red (matching that of the minute scale), while the additional seconds hand offered by the rattrapante function is rendered without color. | {
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They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp's chief doctor, seen by The Observer.
'Experience teaches us' that such symptoms must be expected 'whenever nasogastric tubes are used,' says the affidavit of Captain John S Edmondson, commander of Guantánamo's hospital. The procedure - now standard practice at Guantánamo - 'requires that a foreign body be inserted into the body and, ideally, remain in it.' But staff always use a lubricant, and 'a nasogastric tube is never inserted and moved up and down. It is inserted down into the stomach slowly and directly, and it would be impossible to insert the wrong end of the tube.' Medical personnel do not insert nasogastric tubes in a manner 'intentionally designed to inflict pain.'
It is painful, Edmonson admits. Although 'non-narcotic pain relievers such as ibuprofen are usually sufficient, sometimes stronger drugs,' including opiates such as morphine, have had to be administered.
Thick, 4.8mm diameter tubes tried previously to allow quicker feeding, so permitting guards to keep prisoners in their cells for more hours each day, have been abandoned, the affidavit says. The new 3mm tubes are 'soft and flexible'.
The London solicitors Allen and Overy, who represent some of the hunger strikers, have lodged a court action to be heard next week in California, where Edmondson is registered to practise. They are asking for an order that the state medical ethics board investigate him for 'unprofessional conduct' for agreeing to the force-feeding.
Edmonson's affidavit, in response to a lawsuit on behalf of detainees on hunger strike since last August, was obtained last week by The Observer, as a Guantánamo spokesman confirmed that the number of hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550 detainees. Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this month, although they not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to see any evidence justifying their detention.
This and other Guantánamo lawsuits now face extinction. Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees' right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.
Although some prisoners have had to be tied down while being force-fed, 'only one patient' has had to be immobilised with a six-point restraint, and 'only one' passed out. 'In less than 10 cases have trained medical personnel had to use four-point restraint in order to achieve insertion.' Edmondson claims the actual feeding is voluntary. During Ramadan, tube-feeding takes place before dawn.
Article 5 of the 1975 World Medical Association Tokyo Declaration, which US doctors are legally bound to observe through their membership of the American Medical Association, states that doctors must not undertake force-feeding under any circumstances. Dr David Nicholl, a consultant neurologist at Queen Elizabeth's hospital in Birmingham, is co-ordinating opposition to the Guantánamo doctors' actions from the international medical community. 'If I were to do what Edmondson describes in his statement, I would be referred to the General Medical Council and charged with assault,' he said.
· Yesterday the new German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the latest leader to condemn the United States for practices at the prison. In a magazine interview days before her first visit as premier to the US, Merkel said Washington should close Guantánamo and find other ways of dealing with terror suspects. | {
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Le plan d'action dévoilé par M. Lisée comporte une vingtaine de mesures touchant l'emploi, le logement, l'éducation et la francisation, notamment.
Dans la foulée de l'attentat au Centre culturel islamique de Québec, le 29 janvier, le chef du Parti québécois (PQ), Jean-François Lisée, a présenté, lundi, une série de mesures destinées à améliorer l'intégration des immigrants et à combattre le racisme et la discrimination au Québec.
«Au cours de la dernière semaine, il y a eu une prise de conscience nationale extrêmement forte des difficultés d'intégration de plusieurs Québécois d'origines diverses - particulièrement, mais pas exclusivement maghrébine -, une prise de conscience très forte qu'il y avait dans notre société des traces de racisme et de discrimination qu'il convient de faire reculer», a affirmé M. Lisée en conférence de presse à Montréal.
Le plan d'action comporte une vingtaine de mesures touchant l'emploi, le logement, l'éducation et la francisation, notamment.
On y retrouve, entre autres, des propositions pour assurer une meilleure reconnaissance des diplômes et des compétences des immigrants, qui sont aux prises avec des taux de chômage beaucoup plus élevés que la moyenne des Québécois. Ces propositions impliquent le déblocage de goulots persistants que l'on retrouve chez certains ordres professionnels et dans les institutions d'enseignement, par exemple.
Certaines mesures visent aussi à contrer la discrimination à l'embauche, notamment en interdisant l'exigence d'une première expérience de travail canadienne, qui crée un cercle vicieux auquel il est impossible d'échapper lorsqu'un candidat nouvellement arrivé se cherche un premier emploi.
Le PQ propose également d'instaurer des amendes salées dans les cas de discrimination pour l'obtention d'un emploi ou d'un logement, parallèlement à des mesures de soutien financier pour l'incitation à l'embauche d'immigrants et à l'offre de stages.
«Il n'existe aucune amende pour quelqu'un qui est pris en flagrant délit de discrimination à l'embauche. Ça n'a pas de sens», a soutenu le chef péquiste.
De plus, il suggère de donner plus de mordant au programme d'embauche des minorités par l'État québécois en insistant sur les objectifs à atteindre, notamment par le biais de la discrimination positive.
Le PQ, qui a déjà fait part de son intention de mettre au rancart le cours d'éthique et culture religieuse, veut remplacer celui-ci par un cours sur la citoyenneté qui toucherait un ensemble de notions sociales, incluant, entre autres, le fait religieux, l'égalité entre les hommes et les femmes, la démocratie, la sexualité et autres.
«Ce cours doit avoir comme objectif de promouvoir une culture de l'antiracisme et contre la discrimination», a dit M. Lisée.
Le Parti québécois insiste également sur les mesures de francisation et l'intégration d'un plus grand nombre d'immigrants dans les conseils d'administration d'organismes publics et parapublics, parmi les candidats et employés des partis politiques et dans les manifestations culturelles.
Jean-François Lisée a d'ailleurs reconnu que son propre parti avait un examen de conscience à faire, alors qu'il n'était pas en mesure lui-même de dire quelle proportion du personnel salarié du PQ est immigrante: «Je suis certain que c'est insuffisant. On fait des efforts pour être beaucoup plus représentatifs au sein du Parti québécois», a-t-il soutenu.
Plusieurs des mesures visent aussi la sensibilisation, une approche qui a ses limites, notamment sur le web, où le document du Parti québécois suggère «d'encourager les citoyens à diffuser des contre-discours (aux propos racistes) et à marginaliser les voix discriminatoires».
«Le degré de tolérance au discours détestable est plus élevé qu'avant, a fait valoir M. Lisée. Développons des anticorps, disons que c'est détestable et on peut aussi tous bloquer (ces personnes détestables).»
Le chef péquiste s'est défendu de faire de l'angélisme, tout en reconnaissant que lutter contre l'émergence et la diffusion élargie d'un discours d'intolérance n'est pas une tâche simple.
«Il n'y a pas de réponse parfaite ou toute faite, mais l'inaction n'est pas une option», a-t-il martelé. | {
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In rock music’s civil war over the Confederate flag, Tom Petty has chosen a side.
After South Carolina lowered the Battle Flag last week, many bands have continued to sell merchandise featuring the stars and bars, while Detroit-native Kid Rock told those protesting his use of the flag to kiss his ass.
“Isn’t Kid Rock from the Midwest,” Tom Petty asked Rolling Stone in an interview Tuesday. “I think they were on the other side of the Civil War.”
Related: Can Confederate flags cause a government shutdown?
Petty feels no need to defend his own past use of Confederate imagery.
“I wish I had given it more thought,” Petty said. “It was a downright stupid thing to do.”
In 1985, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released an album titled Southern Accents, which featured a song from the perspective of a southerner who “still blames the North for the discomfort in his life.”
“So my thought was the best way to illustrate this character was to use the Confederate flag,” Petty explained. “I used it onstage during that song, and I regretted it pretty quickly.”
The flag was featured prominently in the marketing for the band’s ensuing tour. In a live record titled Pack up the Plantation: Live!, the band performs in front of a large Confederate flag.
Petty told Rolling Stone that he always regretted using the flag in that manner, and wishes he’d reflected on how others might perceive it.
“People just need to think about how it looks to a black person. It’s just awful. It’s like how a swastika looks to a Jewish person,” he said.
The rocker went on to say that Americans should be more concerned about losing innocent black men to police killings, than a symbol of “southern heritage.”
“As a country, we should be more concerned with why the police are getting away with targeting black men and killing them for no reason. That’s a bigger issue than the flag,” Petty said. | {
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As the Ottawa Senators prepared to play in the outdoor NHL100 Classic in December against the Montreal Canadiens, former Senators defenceman Dion Phaneuf stood off to the side, a few feet away from where Ottawa captain Erik Karlsson was holding court in a media scrum.
The crowd around Karlsson in the Ottawa RedBlacks dressing room at Lansdowne Park was deep as he talked about coming back from his off-season surgery to repair tendons in his left foot.
Phaneuf looked at the crowd around Karlsson and admitted he didn’t see this unfolding quite the way it did. Phaneuf recalled a conversation he had with Karlsson on the phone after Karlsson had his surgery.
“I remember talking to him in the summer and he wasn’t even walking much,” Phaneuf said. “For me, I look at that and that’s a lot of time off. He’s just showing a lot of character in the way he’s come back and come back to our team as quick as he... | {
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Updated throughout at 5:55 p.m.
President-elect Donald Trump upended years of Pentagon procurement planning with a tweet on Thursday, announcing he had asked Boeing Co. to price an upgrade of its F-18 Super Hornet jet that could replace Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35, the most expensive U.S. weapon system ever.
"Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!" Trump said Thursday in a post on Twitter.
Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016
Lockheed's $379 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is assembled in a massive mile-long factory in Fort Worth, is intended to be the mainstay fighter of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, replacing several older planes including Boeing's F-18.
Development of the F-35 is more than a decade in the works, and Lockheed is planning to build more than 2,400 of the aircraft for the U.S. and allied air forces, a project that will create tens of thousands of jobs at factories across the country and overseas.
The exact impact of Trump's tweet wasn't immediately clear. The Pentagon has scaled back purchases of the F-18, which lacks stealth and other high-tech capabilities of the F-35, and would require extensive design changes to be comparable to the newer plane.
Lockheed shares fell 2 percent after Trump's tweet in after hours trading, while Boeing rose 0.5 percent.
The Pentagon had requested just two F-18 Super Hornets for the fiscal year that began in October. Congress has indicated in spending bills that it would like to buy at least 12 more.
Meanwhile, the F-35 program has had $81 billion in obligations for the last 10 fiscal years. Two contractors, Lockheed and United Technologies Corp., account for 97 percent of the spending, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Government. Yet the program has had repeated challenges, with defense officials saying it would need as much as $500 million extra to finish its development phase.
The fiscal 2017 defense authorization would allow an additional $9.9 billion for the F-35 this fiscal year. The total includes $3.3 billion in funding for the Navy and Marine Corps versions and modifications, and $4.8 billion for the Air Force F-35 variant and modifications.
Trump summoned the chief executives of both companies to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Wednesday, as well a group of top Pentagon officials, to discuss the costs of the F-35 program and also Boeing's proposed replacement for Air Force One, the presidential aircraft. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said he told Trump the new Air Force One would be built for less than $4 billion, less than what Trump said the plane would cost.
Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson said in a statement after the meeting that she had assured Trump the company would continue efforts to reduce the F-35's costs. She didn't announce any new promises.
Lockheed spokesman William Phelps said the company had no comment. Boeing didn't have an immediate comment, spokesman Todd Blecher said.
On Monday, Pentagon officials defended the F-35 fighter program and said the cost isn't spiraling out of control.
Critics of the Pentagon's most expensive weapons system ignore the progress made since the program was reset in 2011, when it was six years behind schedule and $13 billion over budget, said Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan, who heads the office responsible for developing and acquiring the fighter jet.
"This program is not out of control," Bogdan said. "Since 2011, we have basically been on schedule. Since 2011, we have basically been on budget."
Bogdan said he estimates flight testing could end by February 2018.
The $379 billion F-35, known as the Joint Strike Fighter, is the first jet created to serve the vastly different combat missions of the Air Force, Navy and Marines, and it has been plagued by malfunctions of its cutting-edge technology. The Pentagon's top weapons tester, Michael Gilmore, has warned officials in at least four memos since August that the F-35's development should be extended past next year because of continued deficiencies to its combat systems, weapons accuracy and air-to-ground gun.
Two of the three services have declared their versions of the F-35 as having initial combat capability as development winds down and Lockheed prepares to churn out the aircraft at high rates of production. Manufacturing costs are falling and the company has said it expects to assemble the aircraft for about $85 million apiece by decade's end, comparable to the cost for current-generation fighters.
Lockheed and defense officials have been locked in negotiations over terms for the 10th and largest-yet order for the jets. The Pentagon provided the company with a $1.28 billion down payment in November to continue production while the two sides hammer out a contract valued as much as $7.19 billion for 90 aircraft.
Bloomberg | {
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We've followed the development of 6Sec , an unofficial Vine app for Windows Phone, for some time. Being part of the beta program has also enabled us to bring to you the latest features that have been implemented, prior to the app being published to the store. Rudy Huyn, the developer behind 6Sec, has now tweeted that the app will be going live later today at 7pm GMT (or 19:00 for us 24-hour folk).
6Sec is validated !!! Big launch at 19pm GMT !!! #vine on #windowsphone — Rudy Huyn (@RudyHuyn) July 14, 2013
We'll keep an eye out for when the app goes live and will fire across a link to download 6Sec from the Windows Phone Store.
Source: Twitter; thanks, Nishy, for the tip! | {
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Enlarge By Bob Donnan for USA TODAY Sarah Susanka, photographed in her office addition, says Americans are embracing living smaller. "There's a shift in the culture," she says. IMPROVE THE SPACE YOU HAVE IMPROVE THE SPACE YOU HAVE Enlarge Sarah Susanka's remodeling tips: 1. Set priorities. Of three factors -- quality, quantity and cost -- determine which two are the most important and let the other "float." 2. Examine your space. Look at what can be done within the existing footprint. List activities to be accommodated, recognizing that a place is needed but not necessarily an entire room. 3. Study storage. A little well-designed storage in the right place can replace a lot of poorly designed storage, opening up floor space in areas that are currently too small to function properly. 4. Bump out a little. Adding just a few feet to a space can contain costs and maintain a house’s scale. 5. Add on with grace. If none of the above strategies meet your needs, and the budget allows, a small addition may be the best option. Consider what each exterior face of the house will look like.
When architect Sarah Susanka remodeled her kitchen, she didn't use pricey granite or edgy concrete for her countertops. She used laminate. Her cabinets: Ikea. "You can save thousands of dollars" by using simple materials in a well-designed space, says Susanka, author of the best-selling 1998 book The Not So Big House. For more than a decade, she has urged people to build better, not bigger. Now, as the U.S. economy struggles to climb out of a tailspin and environmental concerns rise, her message has gone mainstream. New homes, after doubling in size since 1960, are shrinking. Last year, for the first time in at least 10 years, the average square footage of single-family homes under construction fell dramatically, from 2,629 in the second quarter to 2,343 in the fourth quarter, Census data show. The new motto: living well with less. "There's a shift in the culture," says Susanka, whose new book, Not So Big Remodeling, helps homeowners use existing space better. She says the economy has forced people to rethink McMansions and focus instead on what they need. Other architects agree. "It's a return to common sense and what really matters," says architect Marianne Cusato, who designed the Katrina Cottage, a modular kit house for people who were displaced by the 2005 hurricane. Cusato says the banking collapse last fall prompted her to co-design what she calls "The New Economy Home." In 1,500 square feet, it has three bathrooms, a half-bath and four bedrooms, one of which can be used as a rental unit. "It's a small house that lives large," Cusato says. She plans to begin selling the floor plan on her website as early as April. "It's sad that it took a complete economic meltdown" for people to appreciate smaller homes, but at least something good can come from it, says Michelle Kaufmann, author of Prefab Green, published last month. Kaufmann, a California architect who designs compact, factory-built, eco-friendly homes, says she's busier than ever because "these concepts are resonating on a mass level." One of her modern homes is on display in the backyard of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. She says new gadgets, such as the iPhone, have helped consumers see that bigger is not always better. Now, she says, "we want more out of less." The shrinking dream Kaufmann and others expect the shift in attitudes to persist even after the economy recovers. "This will remain a trend. I don't expect this (home size) to come back up," says Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president of research for the National Association of Home Builders. Nine of 10 builders surveyed by NAHB this year say they're building or planning smaller, lower-priced homes than in the past. "We don't need big homes," he says. "Family size has been declining for the past 35 years." Home sizes tend to stagnate during recessions, says Kermit Baker, chief economist of the American Institute of Architects. He expects that when the economy recovers, many first-time or middle-income buyers may want more square footage than they can now afford. Baker says plummeting home values, however, have caused many people to stop seeing houses as an investment but rather as a place to live. He says home-size declines probably will continue among high-end buyers, who began scaling back even before the recession. Steve Alloy, president of Virginia-based Stanley Martin Homes, says he started seeing that shift a few years ago and as a result began offering smaller floor plans. In the past eight months, he has introduced two models that are each under 2,000 square feet. In the Tucson area, Jeffrey Mezger says two-thirds of his houses that have sold in the past 90 days were less than 1,600 square feet. "In these economic times, people are more practical," says Mezger, chief executive officer of KB Homes, one of the nation's largest home builders. He says consumers, who were hit by record gas prices last summer, are also more concerned about utility bills, so energy efficiency has become more important. Two years ago, he says, the average KB house was about 2,400 square feet, which can easily accommodate four bedrooms and three bathrooms. He expects it could drop to 1,500 or 1,600 this year. In many communities, his models now start at 1,000 square feet. In Houston, KB Homes has an 880-square-foot house for $63,995. "We could have gotten a bigger home" but chose instead better flooring, lighting, countertops and cabinetry, says Jennifer Kovatch, 24, an accounting manager. Next month in Corona, Calif., she and her fiancé are buying their first home. It has three bedrooms, not four. "We traded an extra bedroom for upgrades." Carole Conley and her husband had $1 million to spend when they went house-hunting in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. They could have bought a 5,000-square-foot home but decided against it. "We're a couple looking to our elderly years," she says, adding they want a house that will be easy to maintain when they retire. So they're buying a well-designed 2,000-square-foot rambler and plan to add 700 square feet. As an interior designer, Christine Brun sees a "complete reversal" from a decade ago. Now, she says, her clients are clamoring for less square footage, and manufacturers are responding with smaller furniture and appliances. "You're almost unpatriotic to live so large," says Brun, author of Small Space Living, published last month. She says Baby Boomers want to downsize, and young eco-minded adults "don't care if they live in 500 square feet. They just want cool stuff." Between those attitudes and a crashing economy, she sees big prospects for smaller houses: "It's like a perfect storm." "The key to small homes is connectedness," Cusato says, adding that people don't need as much interior space for entertainment or exercise if they live near parks, shops or other people. "I grew up in Alaska, and we played outside all the time. We could walk everywhere in our neighborhood." How to live well with less For years as an adult, Cusato lived in New York apartments with less than 300 square feet. She says she lived outside, in her community, as much as inside, where she simplified her belongings. She told her family not to give her any more "tchotchkes." "Build what you need. Build what inspires you," Susanka says. "Don't build to impress your neighbors." As a best-selling author, Susanka could have built a grand home. She chose instead a 2,200-square-foot Cape Cod with a big front porch and "three perfectly proportioned" dormers on a lot that looks like country but is close to the airport, a good grocery store and a beautiful lake with walking paths. "What more could we ask?" she writes in her new book. She later added 200 square feet for her office. She and her husband both work from home, so office space accounts for one-third of their square footage. "I don't feel we need more space," she says. If designed right, she says, less space can work well. "There are lots of things that can be done without spending a lot of money," Susanka says. She tells readers to think about how they really live and, if they feel they're short on space, to repurpose rooms that are rarely used, such as formal living and dining rooms. She says rooms can and should do "double duty." If they still feel more space is needed, she says, often a small addition will suffice. Susanka says the push to living smaller "at some point had to happen," because McMansions use more resources and are not environmentally sustainable. "We're in the midst of a pendulum swing," she says. "What will come of this will be a more balanced home." READERS: What's the square footage of your home? In how small of a space could you manage? Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more | {
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The Brisbane Broncos can confirm that David Fifita has been released from custody in Bali and will travel home to Australia.
He had been detained by authorities in Bali after an alleged incident involving a security guard on Friday night.
The Broncos and local legal representatives have worked with Indonesian authorities to ensure David’s release.
David was respectful of Indonesian law and cooperated fully with local law enforcement throughout his incarceration.
The Broncos have been working closely with the NRL Integrity Unit, and David will outline his version of events to the Unit in coming days.
He will arrive home in Brisbane tomorrow, accompanied by a Broncos official who travelled to Bali to provide support after David was taken into custody.
Broncos CEO Paul White will be on hand for their return at Brisbane International Airport. | {
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For years, the U.S. Education Department (over two administrations) has battled with states, college leaders and consumer advocates over rules requiring institutions operating online to secure approval from each state in which they intend to enroll students. The issue has often seemed arcane and the debate impersonal.
No longer.
Education Department officials announced Monday that Californians who are enrolled in online programs at public or private nonprofit colleges and universities in other states will be ineligible for federal financial aid under the 2016 state authorization rules that took effect in May because of a judge's ruling.
The federal judge, acting in a lawsuit brought by two faculty unions, had ordered the department to put in place the long-delayed state authorization rules drafted in the waning days of the Obama administration rather than a new version of the rules negotiated last spring by a panel appointed by the Trump administration, which consumer advocates (and their allies in the faculty unions) said would loosen restrictions on for-profit online providers.
Ironically, though, the students who are put in harm's way by the impasse between the Education Department and the unions over the state authorization rules are enrolled at public and private nonprofit colleges, not for-profit institutions.
That's because the 2016 rules require states to have a process through which online students can submit complaints to a state agency about their institutions. While California has such a process for for-profit colleges operating in the state, through the Bureau for Private and Post-Secondary Education, it does not have an equivalent process for nonprofit colleges because it has not had a functioning statewide coordinating board for nearly a decade.
California is also the sole state (the only other holdout is the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) that is still not participating in the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, which provides a workaround to the issue.
"Until California establishes such a process for out-of-state public and nonprofit institutions or enters into an appropriate reciprocity agreement, those institutions will be unable to comply with the now-effective 2016 regulation if they provide distance education or correspondence courses to students residing in California," the Education Department guidance said, noting that its own version of the state authorization rules would eliminate the complaint requirement. "Thus, under the 2016 regulation now in effect, students residing in California receiving distance education or correspondence courses from out-of-state public or nonprofit institutions are ineligible for Title IV programs until such time as the State of California provides those institutions with an appropriate complaint process or enters into a reciprocity agreement."
Exactly how many students could be affected is hard to say, but it is almost certainly multiple tens of thousands. In 2017-18, data from the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements showed there were more than 141,000 students enrolled in online courses in states that were not part of the consortium. At that time, Massachusetts and Puerto Rico had joined California and the Marianas as nonparticipants. California over all has about 80 percent of the nearly 50 million in total population of those four states or territories, so if its residents enroll online in anywhere near a similar proportion, more than 100,000 students could be affected.
What might the impact be? Anything that would make multiple tens of thousands of students ineligible for federal financial aid is a big deal. And the situation could be even more complicated if some of the financial aid due to these students for the fall semester has already been distributed, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, Justin Draeger, said on Twitter Tuesday.
Given the backdating, disbursements to students who are now deemed ineligible would - in theory - need to be returned. In practice, that's rife with problems. That's the (multi?) million dollar question following ED's latest state authorization anncmnt: https://t.co/hdpZdESUMN — Justin Draeger (@justindraeger) July 23, 2019
Draeger's point is that the department could require students who have already received their financial aid to repay it, and require their institutions to help collect it -- a daunting and unpleasant prospect.
Fair Warning
This situation was foreseeable -- and in fact it was foreseen. In early May, soon after Judge Laurel Beeler sided with the National Education Association and the California Federation of Teachers in forcing the release of the Obama-era rules, officials of the WICHE Cooperative for Education Technologies (WCET) wrote to Beeler and the Education Department warning about the potential implications of the judge's ruling.
Among the issues they cited: some states' lack of a complaint process for students. "The lack of a complaint process will cause these institutions to be out of compliance on the regulations’ effective date. Thousands more students will suddenly become ineligible for federal financial aid as of the effective date of this ruling."
Several experts on federal regulation and online learning interviewed for this article said they believed the Education Department is technically right in saying that the regulation as written means that the California students are ineligible for aid.
"The department is not intentionally forcing the issue," said Jon Fansmith, director of government relations at the American Council on Education, higher ed's main lobbying group. "They are bound by the fact they had put previous state authorization rules on delay, but the court compelled them to release it."
But Russ Poulin, executive director of WCET, said he believed the department "could have done more" to address the problem rather than just draw attention to it.
The administration did not raise the complaint issue in its appeal of the judge's ruling in the state authorization case, even though WCET's letter had made department officials aware of the situation. Raising the prospect then of "the harm the decision would cause to tens of thousands of students" might have influenced the judge in her appeal; raising it now seems less helpful, he said.
Poulin and Fansmith said they saw several possibilities to fixing the situation, with varying degrees of feasibility: the judge working with the department and the union to delay just this portion of the 2016 state authorization rules, or the department speeding up its release of the new version of the state rules and possibly declaring a sort of emergency (citing the potential loss of aid) to have them take effect sooner.
Officials at the faculty unions that originally sued to keep the Obama administration's state authorization plan on track portrayed the Education Department's announcement this week as a cynical tactic.
“Secretary DeVos is under a court order to reinstate protections for student loan borrowers who attend online schools -- protections that ensure that students have access to critical information about the online programs before being saddled with student debt," Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, in a statement. "Now DeVos claims she must withhold necessary grants and loans to students in California to implement the protections. The Department of Education’s determination to harm students, either through its incompetence or vindictiveness, is unacceptable. We remain willing to help the Department implement the protections in a way that does not jeopardize critical loans and Pell grants for students. But the Department, sadly, seems unwilling to do right by students.” | {
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I put my heart into everything I do fuck me, right?!
183 shares | {
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ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences
Britain risks a no-deal recession so severe that it sends shockwaves across Europe and beyond, leading economists warned today as Brexit talks failed to achieve the necessary breakthrough.
The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development added that even if Theresa May squeaks her proposed Brexit deal through Parliament, the economy will grow by less than one per cent both this year and next.
The dire forecast came as diplomats said the EU does not expect a Brexit deal this week after discussions between Brussels chief negotiator Michel Barnier and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox on the Northern Ireland border backstop row. “We are preparing for a working weekend,” one official said.
Mr Cox said the talks had been “robust” and defended the UK proposals as “very reasonable”.
In other developments:
Senior radiologists warned there could be delays to cancer testing and treatment whatever the outcome of the Brexit votes next week, as hospitals are having to prepare for the risk of no deal and so may book in fewer patients.
America’s ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson said Britain would have to accept US agricultural goods as part of any trade deal despite the controversies over chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef.
Business Secretary Greg Clark told of “big implications” for sectors of the economy amid reports of a bonfire of thousands of tariffs in the event of a no-deal departure to limit trade chaos.
The OECD believes higher tariffs from having to do business on World Trade Organisation terms after a no-deal Brexit would wipe about two per cent off UK GDP in the two years after leaving. “The effects could be stronger still if a lack of adequate border infrastructure and a loss of access to EU trade arrangements with third countries were to cause serious bottlenecks in integrated cross-border supply chains,” the Paris-based think tank added.
“The costs would also be magnified if this also induced a further decline in business and financial market confidence and disruptions in financial markets.
“In such a scenario, the likely near-term recession in the United Kingdom would generate sizeable negative spillovers on growth in other countries.”
Contingency plans for a chaotic Brexit are being put in place on both sides of the Channel.
But the economists stressed: “UK-EU separation without an agreement would still be a major adverse shock for Europe and possibly elsewhere in the world, given that the United Kingdom is an important trading partner for many countries.”
Speaking after talks in Brussels, Mr Cox said the negotiations were at a “very sensitive” stage.
“We are into the meat of the matter now. We have put forward some very reasonable proposals and we are now really into the detail of the discussion. Both sides have exchanged robust, strong views and we are now facing the real discussions,” he added.
If it takes until the weekend to reach a deal, Mrs May could only present it to Parliament on Monday, the day before the “meaningful vote” on her Brexit blueprint.
British ministers have recently heightened their warnings about the dangers of a no deal as the threats posed to trade, food supplies and even medicines have become clearer.
Amid a global slowdown in economic growth, the OECD predicted UK GDP growth would be just 0.8 per cent this year, lopping 0.6 off its November forecast. For 2020 it was cut by 0.2 to 0.9 per cent. “The still-strong labour market continues to support household spending, but persisting uncertainty about Brexit and the ongoing growth slowdown in the euro area are weighing on business confidence, investment and export prospects,” the economists explained.
Such dismal figures would mean the UK growing slower than the eurozone as a whole, which is predicted to be one per cent this year and 1.2 per cent for the following 12 months, down by 0.8 and 0.4 respectively.
Predicted German growth was more than halved, down from 1.6 per cent to 0.7 per cent this year, though it was then due to overtake the UK in 2020 with a forecast of 1.1 per cent. France is set to grow by 1.3 per cent in both years.
A number of Tory Right-wingers who are fearful of Brexit not happening at all are increasingly keen to back Mrs May’s deal if she can offer some meaningful change on the backstop.
However, No10 appeared to be having more problems in winning over Labour MPs in Leave constituencies despite the £1.6 billion fund for towns in struggling communities, which has been dismissed as “bribes”, and pledges on workers’ rights.
Wigan MP Lisa Nandy expects less than a dozen of her colleagues to support the Government given that Mrs May’s proposals are so vague on the future trade deal with the EU. The OECD interim March report also stressed that a move to WTO trading terms would impact EU nations to a differing extent, with Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark facing “significant adjustment costs in particular regions or sectors”. | {
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More by Louis The Child & Drew Love
| {
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Sharad Pawar made the remarks in Shrigonda as he canvassed for NCP candidate Ghanshyam Shelar.
One should wear bangles if he cannot do any work for people despite being a minister for 13 years, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said on Wednesday as he launched a scathing attack on former party leader Babanrao Pachpute.
Babanrao Pachpute joined the BJP in 2014. He is contesting from Shrigonda in Ahmednagar district.
Sharad Pawar made the remarks in Shrigonda as he canvassed for NCP candidate Ghanshyam Shelar ahead of the October 21 Maharashtra Assembly elections.
"Babanrao Pachpute said at a recent rally that when he was a minister (in Congress-NCP regime) for 13 years the only right he had was that of signing. But when a minister signs on something, it turns into order, works get approved with one signature," Sharad Pawar said.
"So, what can we say if someone says he had the right to sign, yet couldn't do anything? One should wear bangles if he cannot do anything for people despite being a minister," Sharad Pawar said.
Campaigning for NCP candidate Sandip Kshirsagar in Beed Assembly constituency, Sharad Pawar targeted former party leader and minister Jaydatta Kshirsagar.
Jaydatta Kshirsagar, Sandip's uncle, joined the Shiv Sena earlier this year.
"Those whom we had supporters have chosen to walk into some other home (join some other party). People of Beed have decided to put these people in their place," Sharad Pawar said, without naming Jaydatta. | {
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I am a woman, I am human too,My body changes with age,My skin isn’t crystal clear,I have body and facial hair,And I may not have an ideal figure.I am a woman, I am human too,I was not born a master chef ,I was not born a homemaker,I may not always be great at multi tasking,My home can sometimes be a mess.I am a woman. I am a mother, I am human too,My children are not always well behaved,I may not always know it all,Sometimes I struggle to balance work and home,I need breaks too.I am a woman, I am human too.I am expected to be superwoman.I am expected to be perfect.I wear a mask of perfection,To hide the imperfections.After all, I am a human too.
We just celebrated International Women’s day on 8th March and it was great to see women being celebrated all over the world.
The woman of today takes on many different roles. Besides the traditional roles of being a daughter and wife and mother they also play important roles in the workplace as women entrepreneurs and leaders.
But the expectations put on women haven’t changed much over the times. Women are expected to always be perfectly put together. For instance to keep up to the beauty standards, run perfect homes and families and also have successful careers. In other words they are expected to know it all and do it all. But where are these expectations coming from?
Now hold on, before we look at men and blame it all on them,
First let’s take a look at ourselves and the women around us.
Yes do you see it, the advises we get on an everyday basis-
Don’t wear that, you may give out the wrong impression.
Better lose weight, you won’t get a boy otherwise.
You can’t cook? How will you manage your own house later.
Your children look like they need more attention, why don’t you leave your job.
On the other hand we don’t see the same advises and judgements given to men.
We may not realise it, but as women we do pass judgements on other women. To begin with we set beauty standards such as the perfect body type and endorse the same. We are quick to criticize others choices. We pull each other down with our words and actions and also put expectations on ourselves and on others.
Besides that we also set the standards for perfection and we go to great lengths to keep up to that mask of perfection.
The only way we can truly celebrate being a woman is by firstly embracing our true selves and then letting go of the masks we have on. Also let’s not be too quick to judge other women. Always stay true to yourself and encourage other women to do the same. Learn to stand by each other and pull each other up.
This is not a WOMAN vs. WOMAN nor a MEN vs. WOMEN competition. You don’t need to keep up to anyone because this is not a race. Make choices that you are comfortable with ,stick to your lane and do what’s best for you. What works for someone may not work for you, so why all the competition and comparison?
The beauty of a woman is when she can see beauty in herself and in others. Stay true to yourself and most importantly be a good person while you are at it.
So let go of the mask of perfection and inspire others to do the same.
Follow lifeisbeautiful_sha on instagram for positive quotes and affirmations.
Sharon Lobo
CONTENT WRITER
Life is Beautiful
To read more posts, click here | {
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CORRESPONDENTE
NOVA YORK
O ensino da letra cursiva (de mão) será opcional em Indiana e deverá ser banido definitivamente nos próximos anos. A decisão deve ser seguida por mais de 40 Estados americanos que também consideram esta forma de escrever como ultrapassada. Na avaliação deles, é mais importante se concentrar no aprendizado das letras bastão (de forma).
O argumento dos defensores desta lei, que provocou polêmica nos Estados Unidos nas últimas semanas, é de que hoje as crianças praticamente não necessitam mais escrever as letras com caneta ou lápis no papel.
Seria mais importante elas aprenderem a digitar mais rapidamente, já que quase toda a comunicação acontece por meio de letras de forma nos celulares e computadores.
"As escolas devem decidir se pretendem ensinar letra cursiva, mas recomendamos que deixem de ensinar e se foquem em áreas mais importantes. Também seria desnecessário encomendar apostilas que ensinem letras cursiva", diz um memorando do Departamento de Educação de Indiana.
A Carolina do Norte também já anunciou que adotará uma medida similar, segundo suas autoridades educacionais.
A Geórgia é outro Estado americano que recomenda o fim do ensino, segundo seu porta-voz Matt Cardoza, apesar de "aceitar que os alunos aprendam a letra de mão caso os professores considerem necessário".
Esses Estados, assim como outros 40, integram o Common Core Stated Standards Initiativa (Iniciativa para um Padrão Comum de Currículo), responsável por tentar padronizar o ensino básico nos Estados Unidos. O grupo defende abertamente o fim do ensino da letra cursiva.
Jody Pfister, diretor de um distrito escolar em Indiana, escreveu artigo em um jornal local defendendo as mudanças. "Se olharmos antigos documentos ou se vermos a escrita de mão dos tempos da guerra civil, eles eram verdadeiros trabalhos artísticos e certamente perderemos parte disso. Mas temos de levar em conta o progresso", escreveu o diretor.
Os opositores, além de levar em conta a tradição, dizem que a letra representa em parte a personalidade das pessoas, especialmente nas assinaturas, e também permite que sejam lidos documentos históricos, como a declaração de independência dos Estados Unidos.
Um encontro da Master Penmen, a associação internacional dos instrutores de letra de mão, deve se encerrar hoje no Arizona com um repúdio à decisão em Indiana. Eles contam também com um apoio indireto do presidente Barack Obama, que tem o costume de escrever cartas de próprio punho para algumas pessoas, inclusive para eleitores.
Trajetória. Até poucas décadas, o ensino da letra cursiva nos países ocidentais era inquestionável, e crianças passavam horas aperfeiçoando a letra em cadernos de caligrafia. O importante, além de tornar os traços legíveis, era ser capaz de escrever de uma forma considerada bonita. Foi com a pedagogia moderna que a exigência da letra cursiva começou a ser questionada. Com o tempo, cadernos de caligrafia caíram em desuso. | {
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WASHINGTON (AP) — His lease renewed in trying economic times, President Barack Obama claimed a second term from an incredibly divided electorate and immediately braced for daunting challenges and progress that comes only in fits and starts.
"We have fought our way back and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come," Obama said.
The same voters who gave Obama another four years also elected a divided Congress, re-upping the dynamic that has made it so hard for the president to advance his agenda. Democrats retained control of the Senate; Republicans renewed their majority in the House.
It was a sweet victory for Obama, but nothing like the jubilant celebration of four years earlier, when his hope-and-change election as the nation's first black president captivated the world. This time, Obama ground out his win with a stay-the-course pitch that essentially boiled down to a plea for more time to make things right and a hope that Congress will be more accommodating than in the past.
The vanquished Republican, Mitt Romney, tried to set a more conciliatory tone on the way off the stage.
"At a time like this, we can't risk partisan bickering," Romney said after a campaign filled with it. "Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work."
House Speaker John Boehner spoke of a dual mandate, saying, "If there is a mandate, it is a mandate for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs."
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had a more harsh assessment.
"The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president's first term," McConnell said. "They have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together" with a balanced Congress.
Obama claimed a commanding electoral mandate — at least 303 electoral votes to 206 for Romney — and had a near-sweep of the nine most hotly contested battleground states.
Story continues
But the close breakdown in the popular vote showed Americans' differences over how best to meet the nation's challenges. With more than 90 percent of precincts reporting, the popular vote went 50 percent for Obama to 48.4 percent for Romney, the businessman-turned-politician who had argued that Obama had failed to turn around the economy and said it was time for a new approach keyed to lower taxes and a less intrusive government.
Obama's re-election assured certainty on some fronts: His signature health-care overhaul will endure, as will the Wall Street reforms enacted after the economic meltdown. The drawdown of troops in Afghanistan will continue apace. And with an aging Supreme Court, the president is likely to have at least one more nomination to the high court.
The challenges immediately ahead for the 44th president are all too familiar: an economy still baby-stepping its way toward full health, 23 million Americans still out of work or in search of better jobs, civil war in Syria, an ominous standoff over Iran's nuclear program, and more.
Sharp differences with Republicans in Congress on taxes, spending, deficit reduction, immigration and more await.
And even before Obama gets to his second inaugural on Jan. 20, he must grapple with the threatened "fiscal cliff" — a combination of automatic tax increases and steep across-the-board spending cuts that are set to take effect in January if Washington doesn't quickly come up with a workaround budget deal. Economists have warned the economy could tip back into recession absent a deal.
Despite long lines at polls in many places, turnout overall looked to be down from four years ago as the president pieced together a winning coalition of women, young people, minorities and lower-income voters that reflected the country's changing demographics. Obama's superior ground organization in the battleground states was key to his success.
The president's victory speech — he'd written a concession, too, just in case — reflected the realities of the rough road ahead.
"By itself the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won't end all the gridlock, or solve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move this country forward," Obama said.
"But that common bond is where we must begin. Our economy is recovering. A decade of war is ending. A long campaign is now over, and whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you and you have made me a better president."
The president said he hoped to meet with Romney and discuss how they can work together. They may have battled fiercely, he said, "but it's only because we love this country deeply."
Romney's short concession — with misplaced confidence, he'd only prepared an acceptance speech — was a gracious end note after a grueling campaign.
He wished the president's family well and told subdued supporters in Boston, "I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader and so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation."
Obama's re-election was a remarkable achievement given that Americans are anything but enthusiastic about the state they're in: Only about 4 in 10 voters thought the economy is getting better, just one quarter thought they're better off financially than four years ago and a little more than half think the country is on the wrong track, exit polls showed.
But even now, four years after George W. Bush left office, voters were more likely to blame Bush than Obama for the fix they're in.
It wasn't just the president and Congress who were on the ballot. Voters around the country considered ballot measures on a number of divisive social issues, with Maine and Maryland becoming the first states to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote while Washington state and Colorado legalized recreational use of marijuana.
From the beginning, Obama had an easier path than Romney to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. The most expensive campaign in history was narrowly targeted at people in nine battleground states that held the key to victory, and the two sides drenched voters there with more than a million ads, the overwhelming share of them negative.
Obama claimed at least seven of the battleground states, most notably Ohio, the Ground Zero of campaign 2012. He also got Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin, and he was ahead in Florida. Romney got North Carolina.
Overall, Obama won 25 states and the District of Columbia and was leading in too-close-to-call Florida. Romney won 24 states.
It was a more measured victory than four years ago, when Obama claimed 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173, winning with 53 percent of the popular vote.
Obama was judged by 53 percent of voters to be more in touch with people like them. More good news for him: Six in 10 voters said that taxes should be increased. And nearly half of voters said taxes should be increased on income over $250,000, as Obama has called for.
Obama's list of promises to keep includes many holdovers he was unable to deliver on in his first term: rolling back tax cuts for upper-income people, immigration reform, reducing federal deficits, and more.
A second term is sure to produce turnover in his Cabinet: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has made it clear he wants to leave at the end of Obama's first term but is expected to remain in the post until a successor is confirmed. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the presidency four years ago, is ready to leave too. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta isn't expected to stay on.
To the end, the presidential race was a nail-biter. About 1 in 10 voters said they'd only settled on their presidential choice within the last few days or even on Election Day, and they were closely divided between Obama and Romney. Nearly 1 percent of voters went for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, who was on the ballot in 48 states.
In an election offering sharply different views on the role of government, voters ultimately narrowly tilted toward Obama's approach.
"We have seen growth in the economy," said 25-year-old Matt Wieczorek, a registered Republican from Cincinnati who backed the president. "Maybe not as fast as we want it to be, but Obama has made a difference and I don't want to see that growth come to an end."
Notwithstanding his victory, Obama will lead a nation with plenty of people who were ready for a change.
"The last four years have been crap," said 73-year-old Marvin Cleveland, a Romney supporter in Roseville, Minn. "Let's try something else."
___
Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nbenac | {
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"I was scared at the moment but now I feel really happy that I’m getting all this support from all over the world and the support isn’t just for me but it’s for everyone who’s been through this. | {
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Manti Te'o fails to impress with slow 40 times at combine
Chris Strauss, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY
Manti Te'o may have performed admirably in his press conference with a massive media horde on Saturday, but he left a little bit to be desired during his 40-yard-dash performances at the NFL Scouting Combine Monday.
The former Notre Dame linebacker clocked unofficial hand-times of 4.81 and 4.8 in his two attempts (later adjusted to an official 4.82 as his best), neither of which were awful, but also failed to show the explosiveness many teams would be looking for in a first-round pick. His official electronic time (the best of the two runs) was later determined to be 4.82.
NFL Network caught the reaction of Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh after Te'o's first run, which showed him mouthing the words "4.83" and shaking his head.
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Analyst Mike Mayock evaluated Te'o's second run this way.
"He reaches maximum speed at about 20 and there's no increase from there. I think we saw the same thing there. And that's OK. Again, he's an inside linebacker and you've got to go back to the tape. And there's going to be a lot of questions. He's – quote – only a 4.8 guy. Luke Kuechly, a year ago the ninth pick in the draft, ran sub-4.6. Same position, a little bit different body type and person."
"Remember, Manti dropped 12 pounds. I heard (Steve Mariucci) talking earlier about he thought he was a 255-pound linebacker type guy. Manti was that guy as a junior. He was 255. He dropped 10 or 12 pounds to get closer to 240 and be better in the pass game. And subsequent to that, he had seven interceptions this year."
Ex-Dallas Cowboys personnel guy Gil Brandt hand-timed Te'o a little faster, but still tweeted that the performance wasn't what he would've liked to see.
Via @Gil_Brandt:
Just hand-timed Manti Te'o at 4.71 in 40. Had hoped to see 4.65 from him. Probably tight, under pressure. All eyes on him at #NFLCombine
The 40 (and combine as a whole) is just one component of evaluating potential NFL talent. Even if the Lennay Kekua madness had never happened, Te'o's struggles against the speedy Alabama team in the national championship game likely would've raised some red flags among NFL execs. His average showing in this measurable isn't going to do him any favors either.
Not that combine performance is always the greatest predictor of success. Arizona State linebacker Vontaze Burfict ran a 4.93 and 5.1 at the combine last year. Paired with his off the field issues, the former potential first round pick ended up falling all the way out of the draft and had to sign as an undrafted free agent with the Cincinnati Bengals. After all that, he ended up leading the AFC wild card team in tackles as a rookie. | {
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With the recent news that US Postal Service losses in 2011 have been far greater than expected – They're now losing more than $3 billion per fiscal quarter – and with the continued decline in mail volume, it seems only a matter of time until Congress takes the austerity stick uses it to beat the agency half to death. Your anecdotal experience is probably enough to explain why; try to think of the last time you received mail that wasn't garbage. If I didn't occasionally buy something off eBay that arrived by mail, credit card junk mail is the only thing I would ever receive. The Postal Service is unlikely to disappear, but it is highly likely that we won't recognize it in a few more years. Post offices will be closed and consolidated, delivery will be limited to a few times per week in some areas, and the agency will devote even more of its resources to shipping packages as opposed to carrying letters.
In honor of the long history of the USPS (and its predecessor, the Post Office Department originally headed by Ben Franklin, here is a random, hopefully entertaining list of interesting postal trivia and oddities I've amassed over the years.
– As of 2011, the USPS still delivers mail regularly via mule train on one route. An 8-mile trip to the bottom of a canyon to deliver mail to Havasupi Indians in Arizona occurs weekly. Mules, people.
– Although it has been a source of controversy, the most expensive mail route in the U.S. continues as the only one with delivery solely by air. Once per week a subcontractor, who is paid over $50,000 annually in the contract, flies mail to 20 cabins and ranches in the Frank Church Wilderness Area in Idaho. (The cuts referenced in this NPR story were later overturned by the Postmaster General).
– The Zip Code 48222 is a boat on the Detroit River called the J.W. Westcott, which deliver mail to passing ships without either vessel docking. WTF. I have never understood this. But it exists.
– The longest daily rural mail route is 148 miles long and snakes through rural northwestern North Dakota. It serves less than 100 addresses over that vast distance. North Dakota is not a very exciting place, is it? And I bet the letter carriers draw straws to avoid this route.
– The very first daily, day-and-night transcontinental air mail route – from NYC to San Francisco – was established in 1924. The plane stopped between 12 and 16 times for fuel. Air travel has changed a lot, hasn't it.
– Zip Codes rise as one travels west. The highest, 99950, belongs to Ketchikan, Alaska, home of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" that became an issue in the 2008 election. The lowest, 00501, serves a single IRS office building in New York.
– The Pentagon has six Zip Codes. For a single building. The World Trade Center had one as well. Until 2008, Chicago's Merchandise Mart also had its own (60654).
– Marc Chagall's painting "Study for Over Vitebsk" was stolen the Jewish Museum in New York in 2001 and found in a Topeka, Kansas dead letter office. Legally, dead letters are the only kind of mail that can be opened by the Postal Service in an attempt to determine the intended recipient. Or to discover priceless art.
– Loma Linda, CA has no Saturday delivery but is the only municipality with regular Sunday delivery. The town has a large percentage of Seventh Day Adventists, including among its postal workers, who will not work on Saturday.
– The Post Office Department, forerunner of the USPS, had a seriously awesome logo:
– In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, mail was delivered several times per day. In major cities like New York, deliveries in business districts took place almost continuously during the day. Wall Street and Lower Manhattan were the last areas with two-per-day delivery, which ended in 1990.
– For the last 20 years, new USPS employees have seen a training video starring one of the most famous fictional mailmen, Cliff Clavin of Cheers.
– Mail delivery to and in Alaska is a major drain on the USPS. With a poor road network and low population density, it has hundreds of towns to which mail must be flown daily.
– The largest USPS facility in the country by far is Chicago's main post office / sorting facility. It is so large that Interstate 290 travels underneath it at one point. Most of the complex has been abandoned for years. Daley wanted to turn it into a casino.
– A little girl was mailed from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents in Lewiston in 1914. A cooperative postmaster invoiced the child as a "48 pound baby chicken", two pounds under the 50 limit on mailing live poultry. Rather than being sealed in a box, the address was pinned to her dress and she rode with the mail carrier in the cab of the delivery vehicle.
Feel free to add your own trivia or relay some amusing anecdotes. Before we forget all of this stuff. | {
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Saina Nehwal faces Carolina Marin in the World Badminton Championship women’s singles final on Sunday. (Source: AP) Saina Nehwal faces Carolina Marin in the World Badminton Championship women’s singles final on Sunday. (Source: AP)
Saina Nehwal failed in her quest to become first Indian women’s player to win a gold medal at the World Championship after she lost her final match against defending champion and number one seed Carolina Marin 16-21 19-21 in Jakarta on Sunday. After leading early in both sets, Saina let go of the advantage and ended up the second best. She becomes the first Indian player to win a silver at Worlds.
Commentary
As it happened…
1347 hrs IST: ALL OVER! Carolina Marin defends her title after a 21-16 21-19 win over India’s Saina Nehwal in the final
1337 hrs IST: Saina Nehwal once again taking the charge in the match. 14-13 for Saina.
1336 hrs IST: Saina Nehwal breaks Marin after the Spaniard takes 7 straight points. 13-13 now
1330 hrs IST: Carolina Marin coming back into the match now. Wins 4 straight points to reduce Saina’s lead to 2 points. 10-12.
1327 hrs IST: Saina Nehwal has a 5 point lead in the second set. At half, she leads 11-6. Can she hold on?
1322 hrs IST: Saina Nehwal has begun the second set on an aggressive note. She leads 9-5.
1315 hrs IST: Carolina Marin wins the first set 21-16 against Saina Nehwal. Some brilliant plays from the Spaniard.
1311 hrs IST: Marin once again on the charge and she has seven game points. 20-13
1300 hrs IST: Great net play from Marin. She is slowly taking charge in the first set. 5 straight points and she now leads Saina 11-7 in the first set.
1258 hrs IST: Marin with the lead now. Has made it 9-7
1257 hrs IST: Saina Nehwal takes early lead. But Carolina Marin has levelled up. Makes it 7-7.
1250 hrs IST: Saina Nehwal and Carolina Marin are out in the court. Will Saina become the first Indian to clinch a Worlds gold medal or will Marin defend her title?
1245 hrs IST: Moments away from the final between Saina Nehwal and Carolina Marin.
Saina Nehwal expects a bumpy ride on Marin drive
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under fire after a photo emerged of him wearing brownface to a party at a school where he was a teacher nearly 20 years ago. Trudeau, who faces re-election next month, said Wednesday night he "regrets it deeply."
"I should have known better," Trudeau told reporters. "I'm pissed off at myself. I'm disappointed in myself."
Trudeau was a 29-year-old teacher at West Point Grey Academy when the picture was taken, Liberal Party spokesperson Zita Astravas said in a statement to CBS News. The photo, first published by Time magazine Wednesday, was taken at a 2001 dinner, which had an "Arabian Nights" theme. Astravas said Trudeau was dressed as a character from Aladdin.
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In the news conference, Trudeau said he also dressed up "with makeup" and sang "Dayo" at a high school talent show.
Although there were calls for him to resign, Trudeau said, "We take this on a case-by-case basis."
He said he did not think it was racist at the time but "now we know better" and said it was "part of the conversations we all must have."
"I have worked all my life to create opportunities for people and fight against racism and tolerance and I can stand here and say I made a mistake when I was younger," he said.
A photo in the West Point Grey Academy yearbook. West Point Grey Academy, as obtained by Time
Andrew Scheer, the leader of Trudeau's opposition Conservative Party, said "what Canadians saw this evening is someone with a complete lack of judgment and integrity, and someone who is not fit to govern this country."
The leader of Canada's Green Party, Elizabeth May, tweeted that Trudeau "must apologize for the harm done and commit to learning and appreciating the requirement to model social justice leadership at all levels of government."
Trudeau, the son of late former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, ran for federal office in 2015 on a number of progressive promises. Immediately after being sworn in, he made international headlines when he promised a diverse, gender-parity Cabinet and answering "because it's 2015" when asked why he was doing it.
He launched his federal campaign for re-election this week, but Angus Reid Institute tracking indicated about 30% of Canadians approve of the job he's done, while about 60% disapprove.
Last month, an ethics watchdog found he had violated federal conflict of interest rules by improperly trying to influence a former minister in relation to a criminal trial facing major Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, according to BBC News. | {
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White, green, oolong, black and dark tea. Different types of tea all from the same plant!
White, green, oolong, black and dark tea are all products of Camellia Sinensis leaves and buds, the only difference is how they are processed. You can turn the fresh plucked green tea leaves into any of the varieties.
White tea is minimally processed. It is basically plucked and dried in the sun and the shade. White tea normally gives a light cup with sweet or flowery flavors.
Green tea has no oxidation. The oxidation is halted by pan-frying (Chinese teas) or steaming (Japanese) steps. The additional processing brings out more flavor. Characteristic flavors are grassy, vegetal, and earthy, with sweet notes.
Oolong tea gets partially oxidized. Oolong can range in color from dark green to black. The combination of bruising and partial oxidation give many oolongs distinct flowery & earthy flavors. Darker oolongs may have buttery or smoky tastes to them.
Black tea is fully oxidized, which blackens the leaves Black teas are distinct for their briskness and bold taste.
Dark teas are post fermented teas. This is a class of tea that has undergone microbial fermentation, from several months to many years. The exposure of the tea leaves to humidity and oxygen during the process also causes endo-oxidation (derived from the tea-leaf enzymes themselves) and exo-oxidation (which is microbial catalyzed). The tea leaves and the liquor made from them become darker with oxidation. Dark teas give taste of earthy and autumn notes. | {
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President Barack Obama publicly acknowledged a specific drone strike in Pakistan, an unprecedented step. He apologized for killing American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, two al Qaeda hostages, in a signature strike in Pakistan (Photo: White House)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
i. Key points:
Signature strikes return to Pakistan and Yemen.
First confirmed civilian casualties since 2012 in Pakistan.
Drone strikes persist in Yemen despite catastrophic civil war.
More than 100 people killed in US air strikes in Afghanistan.
Al Shabaab attacks continue in Somalia despite losing leaders in drone strikes.
ii. The Bureau’s numbers:
Recorded US drone strikes to date
Pakistan
(June 2004 to date)
Yemen
(Nov 2002 to date)* Somalia
(Jan 2007 to date)* Afghanistan
(Jan 2015 to date) US drone strikes 419 99-119 9-13 13-38 Total reported killed 2,467-3,976 460-681 23-105 99-342 Civilians reported killed 423-965 65-97 0-5 14-42 Children reported killed 172-207 8-9 0 0-20 Reported injured 1,152-1,731 92-221 2-7 18-27
Recorded US air and cruise missile strikes to date
Pakistan
(June 2004 to date)**
Yemen
(Nov 2002 to date)*
Somalia
(Jan 2007 to date)*
Afghanistan
(Jan 2015 to date)
US air & cruise missile strikes N/A 15-72 8-11 4 Total reported killed N/A 156-365 40-141 29-36 Civilians reported killed N/A 68-99 7-47 0 Children reported killed N/A 26-28 0-2 0 People reported injured N/A 15-102 11-21 0
* The Bureau’s estimates are based predominantly on information from open sources like media reports. Sometimes it is not possible to reconcile details in different reports. This is why we use ranges for our record of casualties and, in the case of Yemen and Somalia, our strike tallies.
** In Pakistan the US has only carried out drone strikes.
iii. Bureau analysis for the first half of 2015:
US drone and air strikes killed at least 207 people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen so far in 2015, according to data collected by the Bureau.
The strikes left 52 dead in June alone. Last month there were two confirmed US strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and four in Afghanistan.
CIA drones have been striking in Pakistan at a rate of around two per month for the past two years. After an intense start to the year, with five attacks reported in January, the strikes have become more occasional with none reported in February, one in March and April, and two in May and June.
This year Yemen has sunk into a civil war. Despite this, on January 25 President Barack Obama said the crisis would not affect the US’ counter-terrorism tactics. The US punctuated this statement with drone strikes on January 26, January 31 and February 2. There was then a pause for more than two months in Yemen.
The attacks abated as the Shia Houthi militia forced the government into exile and began taking control of major cities in the west of the country. Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen in an as-yet fruitless effort to halt the Houthi advance.
The drone strikes returned in April in response to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) exploiting the crisis and taking control of the city of Mukalla in the east of the country.
Pakistan
(Jan 1 2015 to date)
Yemen
(Jan 1 2015 to date)
Afghanistan
(Jan 1 2015 to date)
Somalia
(Jan 1 2015 to date)
Confirmed US strikes 11 12-13 17 2-3 Total reported killed 51-72 39-55 128-180 5-12 Civilians reported killed 2-5 1-3 14-39 0-4 Children reported killed 0 1-2 0-18 0 Reported injured 19-25 6 18 0-4
Two strikes in the past six months are of particular note. Both were signature strikes – targeted at men who had been judged as al Qaeda based on their observed patterns of behaviour rather than their actual identities.
In January, the US killed two al Qaeda hostages, an American and an Italian, in Pakistan. The attack was aimed at a building housing four unnamed targets – correctly determined to be al Qaeda fighters by their observed patterns of behaviour.
Unbeknownst to the CIA, the two hostages were being held in the same building. It took the Agency several weeks to determine it had killed the two civilians in the attack.
Another CIA drone strike, this time in Yemen, also appeared to be a signature strike. It killed AQAP’s commander, Nasser al Wuhayshi (right).
Unnamed “US officials familiar with the situation” told Bloomberg the CIA had tracked al Wuhayshi and targeted him in the attack. Other unnamed US officials, however, told the Washington Post they did not know al Wuhayshi was in the car when the drones struck.
The CIA has not commented on the strike, however the timeline of events leading to the White House declaring al Wuhayshi dead suggests this was indeed a signature strike. CNN first reported his death, citing two unnamed Yemeni officials. A US official told the broadcaster America was reviewing its intelligence to see if they had killed him. It was only after AQAP itself declared Wuhayshi dead that the US came out with its own statement.
Country Reports
1. Pakistan
Pakistan: CIA drone strikes All strikes, June 2015 All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2004 to date CIA drone strikes 2 11 419 Total reported killed 11-14 51-72 2,467-3,976 Civilians reported killed 0-3 2-5 423-965 Children reported killed 0 0 172-207 Total reported injured 4 19-25 1.152-1,731
The CIA’s drone campaign continued in Pakistan with two strikes killing 11-14 people in the first week of June.
Four or five people were killed in a strike on the Shawal area of North Waziristan on June 1. Five days later drones reportedly hit the Shawal again, killing 7-9 people. Tribal and security sources told The News three women were among the dead. Another unnamed official told the paper fighters had their families with them “and it is possible the drone killed women as well.” None of the people killed last month have been identified.
June also saw the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Pakistani offensive in North Waziristan. The Pakistani military began air strikes in June 2014, gradually putting ground troops into the tribal agency as the second half of the year progressed. Thousands of militants have been killed since, according to the Pakistani military information service ISPR. However it is impossible to verify these claims as the army is not allowing journalists into the area and telecoms have reportedly been disrupted in some areas. This is also affecting the flow of information relating to drone strikes.
Six month analysis
All the CIA drone strikes so far this year have damaged or destroyed domestic buildings. And 10 of the 11 strikes have reportedly hit in the Shawal area of North Waziristan.
The Shawal is a forested area of steep valleys. This inhospitable region straddles the North-South Waziristan border, and the Afghan-Pakistan border. It has long been a stronghold for smugglers and armed groups. It is one of the last Taliban bastions to be taken by Pakistani ground forces in the military’s ongoing offensive.
The rate of strikes in Pakistan could be reaching a stable point after falling from the peak of the campaign in the second half of 2010. The first and second halves of 2013, and the second half of last year saw strike hit at a rate of around two per month.
The exception is the first half of 2014 when attacks stopped entirely for more than five months while the Pakistan government tried and ultimately failed to negotiate a peace deal with the Pakistan Taliban. Three drone strikes hit in June, after the Pakistan military had begun its now year-long military operation in North Waziristan.
Two al Qaeda hostages, American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, were accidentally killed in a signature in January. They were the first confirmed civilians to die since the second half of 2012. However in the intervening 25 months, the Bureau has collected reports of up to 14 civilians dying in six drone strikes.
2. Afghanistan
Afghanistan: confirmed US drone and air strikes All strikes, June 2015 All strikes, 2015 All US strikes 8 17 Total reported killed 50-89 128-180 Civilians reported killed 14-39 14-39 Children reported killed 0-18 0-18 Total reported injured 17 18
The Bureau has been collecting data on US air and drone strikes in Afghanistan since the start of January this year. In this period, June has been the deadliest month yet recorded.
There have been eight confirmed US attacks that have killed 50-89 people, including at least 14 civilians.
The first two confirmed US attacks, on June 5 and June 8, reportedly killed civilians. The first hit a convoy of vehicles leaving a funeral in Khost province. The attack either killed 34 insurgents who had just buried a senior Taliban commander. Or it killed 14-29 civilian members of the Kuchi tribe who had buried a tribal elder.
The US said it had attacked armed militants in Khost and that reports of civilian casualties were being investigated.
The second attack hit three days later and killed seven people. One was identified as Spargahy, a local Taliban commander. Up to six of the dead were said to be high school students who had been taken for military training. It was not clear what age they were or whether they were taken by force.
The third and fourth strikes killed 13-15 people, including up to seven named alleged Taliban insurgents. There were three US air strikes reported at the end of the month, hitting Nuristan and Paktika province. The Taliban had reportedly fought fierce battles with the Afghan army in the days before the US attacks. The Taliban briefly took control of the province’s Want Waygal district on June 26. The insurgents were pushed out of the area the same day and US air attack killed five in that district on June 27.
The final strike of the month hit on June 30 in Nangarhar province, killing between four and 14 people – all reportedly insurgents. The attack hit after Reuters revealed fighters who claimed loyalty to the Islamic State had pushed the Taliban out of six of the 21 districts in Nangarhar.
Taliban violence continued last month with an attack on the parliament in Kabul. A suicide car bomb breached the wall of the complex and shook the parliament chamber itself. Gunmen stormed the building but were killed by security forces, before they could kill or take hostage any MPs.
The first six months of the year have been particularly bloody for Afghan civilians. As of April 30, 978 civilians had been killed in the ongoing conflict, according to Mark Bowden, the UN Secretary-General’s deputy special representative in the country.
This translates as 245 people killed per month. In 2014, 308 civilians died per month. However, with violence becoming more intense in Afghanistan through May and June, it seems likely 2015 will be at least as lethal for Afghan civilians.
“[Doctors] told me that they are seeing a 50 per cent increase in the number of civilians injured this year compared to the same period last year,” Bowden added.
Fighting continues in the north of the country around the city of Kunduz. The Taliban has advanced on the city and been beaten back by the Afghan army on several occasions this year.
During the latest round of fighting, the Afghan forces reportedly called on the US for air support though none was forthcoming, according to the Washington Post.
3. Yemen
Yemen: all confirmed US drone strikes All strikes, June 2015
All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2002 to date* All US strikes 2 12-13 99-119 Total reported killed 7-8 39-55 460-681 Civilians reported killed 0 1-3 65-97 Children reported killed 0 1-2 8-9 Total reported injured 2 6 92-221
* All but one of these actions have taken place during Obama’s presidency. Reports of incidents in Yemen often conflate individual strikes. The range we have recorded in US drone strikes and covert operations reflects this.
Two confirmed drone strikes killed 7-8 people in June, almost replicating the picture in May when two attacks killed 6-8 people.
The first strike in June killed Nasser al Wuhayshi, the leader of AQAP and second in command of al Qaeda overall.
Wuhayshi had been a leading figure in al Qaeda since the 1990s when in Afghanistan he became Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary. He rose to prominence in the Yemen branch of the terrorist group in 2007 and in January 2009 publicly declared himself the leader of AQAP – an amalgamation of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.
Wuhayshi had led AQAP since it was formed in 2009 out of the remnants of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda in Yemen, which he led since 2007. He had been deputy leader of al Qaeda and Ayman al Zawahiri’s deputy since 2013.
The second strike killed four or five people on June 24. A vehicle was reportedly targeted on the outskirts of Mukalla, in a former army base that AQAP had taken over when they took control of the city in April.
June was the third month of an ongoing Saudi Arabian bombing campaign in Yemen. The strikes are trying to halt the advancing Houthis, a Shia militia, who drove President Abdu-Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile in Riyadh in March.
Hadi was ensconced as president in 2011 by the US and its Gulf allies in 2012 after a popular uprising ousted his predecessor, dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Forces loyal to Hadi and his Gulf supporters are fighting the Houthis who have allied themselves with Saleh’s militias. Militias associated with southern secessionists have taken up arms against the Houthis though are adamant this does not mean they are aligned with Hadi.
Thousands of people have been killed by the civil war and Saudi air campaign. Atrocities have been reported on all sides. Saudi Arabia and its allies are stopping aid supplies from entering the country by sea and air. Houthi forces have besieged the second city of Aden. Vital infrastructure has been destroyed, food is scare, disease rife. The UN says the country is one step from famine and 31 million people require humanitarian aid.
There have been 12 drone strikes so far in 2015, more than in any six month period since the second half of 2012 when 14 drone strikes hit the country. This frequency of attacks is surprising considering Yemen has been riven by civil conflict for most of the past six months.
The increase in the rate of attacks is in part because in April AQAP took advantage of Yemen’s crisis. Its forces swept into Mukalla, the capital of Hadramout province, establishing themselves as the new authority. Four strikes hit in April and since April 12 five of the nine drone strikes have hit Mukalla.
The US drones have not been this focused on a single town or city before now, according to the Bureau’s data. The US did focus its efforts on the Abyan governorate in the second half of 2011 and into 2012. This was in response to AQAP exploiting another period of instability in Yemen to take control of most of the area in and around the governorate, declaring it an Islamic Emirate.
While the number of strikes has been going up, the casualty rate has fallen with fewer people dying per strike in the first half of 2015 than any six month period since the first half of 2013.
The attacks in the past six months have killed a number of named, senior figures in the group. Besides Nasser al Wuhayshi, killed in a signature strike in June, the drones have killed one of AQAP’s key ideologues, Nasser al Ansi, and its chief spokesman, Mohanned Ghallab.
The attacks also killed Ibrahim al Rubaish, a senior AQAP figure, and Sheikh Harith al Nadhari, a leading ideologue who released a statement praising the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
4. Somalia
Somalia: all US drone strikes All strikes, June 2015
All strikes, 2015 to date All strikes, 2007 to date All US strikes 0 2 9-13 Total reported killed 0 5-12 23-105 Civilians reported killed 0 0-4 0-5 Children reported killed 0 0 0 Total reported injured 0 0 2-7
June passed without a reported US attack on al Shabaab. However this month the group released pictures of a US surveillance drone it said crashed in May.
Crowds gather in #AlShabab HQs in Dinsor town to view possible US surveillance drone the group said crashed on May 17 pic.twitter.com/14fYHkRHy4 — Harun Maruf (@HarunMaruf) June 5, 2015
There were two confirmed drone strikes in Somalia in the past six months. In a country where such attacks are rare, this represents a high intensity of operations
The strikes continued the trend seen in both the first and second halves of 2014, targeting senior figures in al Shabaab. In March a US special forces drones killed Adnan Garaar, a senior member of al Shabaab’s Amniyatt intelligence service. He reportedly replaced Ysusuf Dheeq as head of the group’s external operations. Dheeq was killed in a drone strike in February this year.
There were two confirmed drone strikes in the second half of last year – both killed senior al Shabaab figures. The first, on September 1, killed the group’s supreme leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane.
Taking out these senior figures appears not to have blunted al Shabaab’s capacity for extreme violence. It has attacked supposedly secure buildings in the fortified government district of Mogadishu. It has assassinated MPs and senior officials.
This year the group committed its worst atrocity to date. Its gunmen murdered 148 students as they slept in their dormitories at Garissa university in northeastern Kenya.
In May, Somalia expert Matt Bryden published a report that explained how al Shabaab was still a potent, transnational terrorist threat, despite having lost leaders to the drones and territory in Somalia to African Union peacekeepers.
Follow our drones team Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith on Twitter.
Sign up for monthly updates from the Bureau’s Covert War project, subscribe to our podcast Drone News, and follow Drone Reads on Twitter to see what our team is reading. | {
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PUNE: India is likely to face more heat waves this year, after a few thousand people lost their lives in Andhra Pradesh in 2015 due to the weather phenomenon.“As we had El Nino last year, it looks like we will have more heat waves this year,” said M Rajeevan, secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).The El Nino forecast issued by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology during the day said, “El Niño remains strong, but continues its gradual decline. Climate models suggest a return to neutral levels in the second quarter of 2016.”India Meteorology Department, the official forecasting agency, is set to issue its first long range forecast of summer temperatures this year, helping businesses as well as general public.Andhra Pradesh and Telangana witnessed a severe heat wave last year. This year, according to IMD , the winter temperatures have been markedly above normal (5.0°C or more) in most parts of the country, and appreciably above normal (3.1 to 5.0°C) at most places over East Madhya Pradesh Jharkhand and Marathwada.Historically, IMD has been issuing long range forecast of only the monsoon rainfall. However, with changing weather pattern and demand from different sections of society, it will now also issue forecast of temperatures for the peak summer months of April, May and June.“We may issue the forecast of summer temperatures by end of February or by first week of March. It will be an advisory, an outlook. We may not tell when the temperatures will rise, etc. But we will give outlook about how much the temperature may remain higher than normal, the frequency of the heat waves, etc,” said Rajeevan.Along with agriculture, various industries whose business is dependent on the summer season had been asking the IMD to give forecast of summer temperatures. These include manufacturers of refrigerators, air conditioners, ice cream and cold drinks.The weather agency, which has decided to replace terms like ‘drought’ with deficient rainfall’ while issuing its monsoon forecast in 2016 as it “creates panic”, will use its existing ongoing models for the summer temperature forecasts.Rajeenvan said that the El Nino is expected to last for about two more months and that it will not be present during the next monsoon in India.According to the Australian agency, close to the equator, the surface of the Pacific Ocean has now cooled by 0.5 °C since the El Nino peaked in late 2015.Based on the 26 El Nino events since 1900, about 50% have been followed by a neutral year and 40% have been followed by La Nina. Models suggest the neutral state is the most likely for the second half of 2016, followed by La Nina, with a repeat El Nimo assessed as very unlikely. | {
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EU and British flags fly outside the European Commission building in London, Britain August 12, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain on Wednesday said it had sent dozens of letters telling European Union nationals to leave the country in error, an embarrassing mistake as the issue of the rights of such citizens in the UK is being negotiated.
Britain’s interior ministry said it was investigating after around 100 of the letters were sent to citizens from other European Union countries, saying they would be removed under immigration law.
“A limited number of letters were issued in error and we have been urgently looking into why this happened. We are contacting everyone who received this letter to clarify that they can disregard it,” a spokeswoman for the Britain’s Home Office said in a statement.
“We are absolutely clear that the rights of EU nationals living in the UK remain unchanged.”
Eva Johanna Holmberg, a Finnish academic who is married to a Briton, told The Independent newspaper that she “couldn’t believe what she was seeing” when she received the letter.
While Britain has promised a generous deal for EU citizens following Brexit, there is not yet agreement over how rights will be protected.
The rights of EU citizens in Britain is one of three issues the bloc wants to settle before it begins discussing the future relationship between Britain and the EU. The EU says more progress on those core issues needs to be made before talks move on. | {
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Coming Soon
Invisible City
While investigating a murder, a detective is drawn into a battle between the visible world and an underground realm inhabited by mythical creatures.
MANK
1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing wit and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish “Citizen Kane.”
UNTOLD
A behind-the-scenes look at how entrepreneur Daniel Ek and financial partner Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify and revolutionized the music industry.
Shadow and Bone
Sinister forces plot against a young soldier when she reveals a magical power that might unite her world. Based on Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse novels.
Alien Xmas
When extraterrestrials attempt to steal Earth's gravity, only the gift-giving spirit of Christmas -- and a small alien named X -- can save the world.
Dancing Queens
A young woman (Molly Nutley) from a small town has big aspirations as a dancer and disguises herself as a man to perform in a struggling drag club.
Baki Hanma
GIRLS ON THE BUS
Four female journalists follow a parade of flawed presidential candidates in this drama series inspired by Amy Chozick's book "Chasing Hillary." | {
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Find a Car, web services, and the recent versions of the Fuel Economy Guide are updated weekly with new vehicles and fuel cost estimates.
Our Find-a-Car feature provides up-to-date fuel economy information, as well as environmental and safety data, for many model years.
Other Ways to View Fuel Economy Information
Print older versions. Download and print older versions of the Fuel Economy Guide. Note: Fuel costs estimates in older versions are not updated.
Download the data. Data for model years 1984 to present are available in formats such as Adobe Acrobat (PDF), Microsoft Excel, CSV, and XML.
Use Find-a-Car Developer Tools. Our web services and downloads can be used to integrate fuel economy information into your website and applications. | {
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If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. HospitalStats does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, physicians, hospitals, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned on the Site. | {
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Whenever you download and install a game on Steam, the files rest neatly on your hard drive like a well-pressed stack of laundry for quick access and organization of custom mod files. Some older Source games creak along on an older format from an earlier age in Steam's saga, but in a new FAQ , Valve says it's converting the guts of these games to use the SteamPipe content delivery system for faster load times and an updated file layout.
Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, and Team Fortress 2 will soon traverse over to the steamapps/common section of your Steam folder instead of the older steamapps/[username] destination. The conversion is automatic: Valve says you'll need enough disk space "for about two full copies of the game" as it changes over.
Modders and mod users have a little bit of extra homework to do to ensure everything works. Custom files will need to be copied manually over to the new directory, and mod authors should start packaging their works as VPK files instead of in a ZIP.
ZIP files still work in a pinch, as Valve describes it:
"For example, if the ZIP contains custom player models that look like (heaven forbid) ponies, and one of the files is materials/models/player/scout/scout_head.vtf, then you might make a dirctory such as tf/addons/i_love_ponies. You should unzip the mod such that the custom scout head texture ends up at tf/addons/i_love_ponies/materials/models/player/scout/scout_head.vtf."
Check out the rest of Valve's FAQ for more detailed info on the changes SteamPipe brings. You can also download and join the ongoing Team Fortress 2 beta to see the updates for yourself. | {
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These lines written by Emily Dickinson seem to be about Nigel Farage.
How dreary to be somebody
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog. | {
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refid:3886942 ilişkili resim dosyası
Bize Apo tecavüz etti
Tanıklar anlatıyor
O güne kadar hiç konuşulmayan, üstü örtülen gerçekler, bu buluşmalar sırasında karşılıklı itiraf edildi. PKK’dayken bire bir tanık olduğu, birinci ağızlardan öğrendiği Abdullah Öcalan ve komutanlarının tecavüzleri ile örgüt içi infazları yazmaya karar verdi. Anı-roman olarak yazdığı kitabın adı, "Özgürlüğe Kaçış."Dilaram’la Irak’ta görüştüm. Kendisi gibi, "örgüt bulduğu anda öldürecek" dediği 100 eski PKK’lıyla diyalog halinde olduğunu öğrendim. Irak’ta bulunduğum beş günde 14 kadınla tanıştım, bazılarıyla kitapta geçen olayları konuşma imkanı buldum.İçlerinden sadece dördü yüzlerini gizlemek kaydıyla fotoğraflarını çekmemi kabul etti. Abdullah Öcalan’la birlikte olduğunu anlatan iki kadın da sadece konuşmayı kabul etti. Biri Öcalan’ın dayağına ve üç kez tecavüzüne maruz kalmıştı. Diğeri ise başkanına itiraz etmeyi aklından bile geçirmemişti.Onları dört gün ve gece boyunca, gaz lambasının aydınlattığı soğuk bir odada sabahlara kadar dinledim. Sokaktayankılanan ayak seslerinin PKK’lıya ait olup olmadığını nasıl anladıklarına, nasıl tedirgin olduklarına tanık oldum.Hepsi, PKK ve Öcalan’dan nefret ediyordu.Bingöllü Sorgûl’ün PKK idam mangası tarafından kurşuna dizilirken söylediği ağıdı hep bir ağızdan ve ağlayarak söylediler. Türkiye’yi, köylerini, anne babalarını, kendileri dağa çıktıktan sonra doğan kardeşlerini özlemişlerdi. Ama hiçbiri itirafçı olmak istemiyordu.Hepsi Cumhurbaşkanı, Başbakan ve İçişleri Bakanı’ndan af bekliyordu. Hepsi Öcalan’ın 1999’da yakalanmasından sonra PKK’dan kopan 5 bin kişinin çıkacak bir af kanunuyla Türkiye’ye döneceğine, iyi vatandaş ve iyi anne baba olacağına inanıyordu.Kadınların çoğu, örgütten birlikte kaçtığı erkek arkadaşıyla evlenmişti. Çocuklarına; Barış, Özlem, Umut adını vermişlerdi. Artık vatandaşı oldukları Irak topraklarında hayatta kalmaya çalışıyorlardı.Hepsinin ortak korkusu, PKK tarafından infaz edilmekti. Hepsi kararlıydı. "Silah mı, Kürdistan mı? Asla! Bu kadar kandırıldık, bu kadar ihanete uğradık. Bir daha asla tetikçi olmayacağız."Dilaram, PKK tarafından öldürüleceğini bile bile yazdığı kitabında geçen ve hálá sağ olan arkadaşlarına PKK’dan bir zarar gelmesin diye kod adlarını değiştirdi. Röportaj sırasında bana da örgütte bilinen kod adlarını değiştirerekkonuştular.Dilaram, şu günlerde bitirmek üzere olduğu kitabını başta Kürtçe yazmaya başladı ama sonra Türkçe devam etti. Çünkü kitap Türkiye’de yayınlansın istiyor.- 1991 baharıydı. 13 yaşında, kıpır kıpırdım. Bir gün ablamla dağa pancar toplamaya gittik. PKK’lıları ilk o zaman gördüm. Kadınlar da vardı. Önce korktum. Çünkü köylüler onlar için dağdaki mahkumlar, diyorlardı. O an, kaderimin değişeceği yer burası, dedim. Mutlaka onlarla olmalıydım. Tarihini okumuştum ama Kürdistan neresi, bilmiyordum. Babam, yaşadığımız köy, derdi. PKK’lılar "Kürdistan için savaşıyoruz. Siz niçin bize katılmıyorsunuz" dediler. Akşam dönüşte düşündüm. Anneme, dağdaki mahkumlara katılacağımı söyledim. Sonra köye gelip bayrak açtılar. Muhtarın evinde toplandılar. O gün kararımı verdim. Nöbetçi PKK’lıya ben de geliyorum, dedim. Yaşın küçük, dedi. Amcamın oğlu Welad’la katıldık. Welad sonra mayına bastı, öldü.- Evden gizlice kaçmıştım. Altınlarımı, en güzel, rengarenk elbiselerimi, çoraplarımı yanıma almıştım. Bir de babamın en güzel kalemlerini, misafir odasının duvarındaki heybeyi ve kardeşimin mekabını çalmıştım. Heybeye yiyecek doldurmuştum. Yüküm ağırdı. Benimle alay ediyorlardı. Sarı pembeli giysilerim kilometrelerce öteden seçiliyordu. Kamuflaj nedir bilmiyordum ki. Alacakaranlıktan sabahın 5’ine kadar yürüdük. İkinci gün elime Kalaşnikof verdiler. 15 gün sonra babam haber yollamış, kızımı vermezseniz sizi buralarda barındırmam, diye. Babam zengin ve sözü geçen bir adamdı. PKK her ay babamdan 50 milyon alıyordu. Beni amcama teslim ettiler.- Beyni yıkanmış gibiydim. Babam heder olacaksın dağlarda, dedi. 15 gün sonra halamın, amcalarımın oğullarını topladım, altı akrabamı yanıma alıp tekrar dağa gittim. Sonraları ölen bir doktor vardı, Kendal. Başkanın Abdullah Öcalan olduğunu söyledi. Anlattı şöyle böyle, peygamber diye. Kafamda hayal ettim Öcalan’ı. Elini uzatsa güneşi tutabiliyordu. Ayağa kalktığında dağlar, ayaklarının dibinde olacaktı. İlk aylarımda kafamda Apo’yu uçan mitolojik bir karakter olarak çizdim. Mantıklı düşünecek yaşta değildim. Köyden çıkmış, ilkokul mezunu bir kızdım. Ancak böyle hayal edebildim. 13 yıl boyunca hep önderlik gerçeğini yani Apo’nun çocukluğunu, babasına isyanını, hayatını öğrettiler.- Onlara katıldığım yılın sonbaharında Bekaa Vadisi’ne eğitime gittim. Apo akademide kalmıyordu. Evi Barliya’daydı. Merakla mitolojik kahramanı görmeyi bekledim. Apo’yu ne kadar tanrılaştırırsam, örgüte o kadar bağlanmış olacaktım. Beni tembihlediler. Ne kadar hakaret ederse etsin, doğrudur başkanım, diyeceksin dediler. Bekliyordum, hayatımdaki en önemli insanı görecektim. Apo’yu görenler bayılırmış. Ben de bayılmaktan korkuyordum. Derken elli M16’lı koruma ordusuyla geldi. Aramızda neden korunduğunu anlayamadım. Açık havada, Bekaa’da tek sıra halinde diziliydik. Afganistan komünistleri, Ermeniler, Avrupa’dan gelenler de vardı. Apo’yu görünce çok şaşırdım. Hiç hayalimdeki lider tipine benzemiyordu. İriyarılığı idare ederdi ama göbekliydi.- Bana ilk söylediği, "Senin baban bir alçak, senin baban bir düşman ajanı, senin baban bir reformist, senin evin bir düşman karakolu. Senin kafandaki düşman karakolunu yıkacağız" oldu. Öyle bir sevindim ki. Kocaman başkan beni, ailemi tanıyor, dedim. Eğitim bitti, Apo evine gitti. Küfürleri iltifat gibiydi. Şimdi babam ve ailem benim için kutsal ama o zaman emir verseydi git, babanın kafasına kurşun sık, diye, gözümü kırpmadan babamı, annemi yere sererdim. Şimdi silahım olsa kime yönelteceğimi bilirim ama bir daha elime silah almam. Geriye baktığımda o hayatı yaşamadım sanki. O Dilaram ben değildim.- Bilmiyorum.- Üç kez. Yönetimle zıtlaştım. Üç gün sosyal tecrite alındım. Kimse benimle konuşmuyordu. Birinde çok zorlanmıştım. 1995’ti. Yukarıdan gelen, ayrıcalıklı ve çatışmaya hiç katılmayanlar bize iş buyurup duruyorlardı. Şunu getir, bunu taşı, diye. Hayat çekilmez hale gelmişti. Saldırıya yazmışlardı beni Zagroslar’daki. Mektup yazdım. Gideceğim, kafama kurşun sıkıp öleceğim, dedim. Zayıf biri değildim. Her gün ceset görüyordum, yaralı taşıyordum. Ama bu yaşamdan kurtuluşum yoktu. Ölmekten başka çarem yoktu. Mektubu verdiğim arkadaşım sonucu göze alamayıp yönetime vermiş. Telsizle çağrıldık, geri dönün diye. Hemen anladım olanları. Tabur komutanı bana hakaret etmeye başladı. 15 gün tutuklu kaldım. Kimse konuşmuyordu benimle, yemeği ayrı yiyordum. Sonra özür dilediler, tepkili olmayayım diye. Eski kadroların tepkisinden korkuyorlar.- Kendimi bir hiç olarak görüyordum. Dünyalı değildim. Ne mektup, ne haber. Ne anne, ne baba... Kaçmayıp ne yapacaktım. Ama nereye gidecektim?- 1996’dan itibaren savaşa gitmedim. Şemdinli’deki yaralanmadan sonra bir yıl yatalak kaldım. PKK doktorları altı kez ameliyat etti. Kandil’de radyoda çalıştım. 1999 Ocak’ında Ecevit’in konuşmasını duydum. Bu sırada eğitim veriyordum. Radyonun sesini açtım. İşin ciddiyetini anladık. "Bu iş bitti" dedik. Sonra rehavet başladı. Örgüt içi sistem, kadına yaklaşım, infazlar tartışılmaya başladı. Bazılarına itibarları, mertebeleri iade edilmeye başladı. Bir yerlere kaçsam, kurtulacağımı düşünmeye başladım. İki kadın, şimdiki eşim dahil iki erkek; dört kişi kaçmaya karar verdik. 21 Nisan 2001 gecesinde İran tarafına kaçtık. Arkamızdan atlarla geldiler ama yakalayamadılar. Gizlendiğimiz yerden gördük onları. Dört yıldır Irak’tayız.- Hálá tek başıma alışverişe gidemiyorum. Yanımda kimse olmadan dışarı çıkamıyorum. Kalabalıklarda başım dönüyor, bayılacak gibi oluyorum. Korkularımdan dolayı herhalde.- Onlara karşıt bir pozisyon alırsam, konuşursam elbette.- Bu yazdığım kitaptan dolayı hayatım tehlikede. Birkaç kez karşılaştım onlarla. Henüz yazdığım kitaptan haberleri yok. Burada öldürdükleri insanlar var. İran ve Suriye Kürtlerinden iki kişi örgütten kaçmıştı. Yedi ay önce evlerini bastılar. Kafalarına kurşun sıkıp gittiler. Geçen yıl da PKK’dan kaçan merkez komitesi üyesi Sipan’ı öldürdüler.- Bilmiyorum. Gidip birilerinden koruma talep etmem. Irak’ın durumu malum. Yeterince kendi güvenlik sorunu var.- Oldu. Ama eşim hep destekledi. İşin ucunda ölüm var. Fakat sen infaz edilen, tecavüze uğrayan arkadaşlarına kendini borçlu hissediyorsan yazmalısın, diyor. Yazarsam bu psikolojiden kurtulacağımı biliyorum.- Çok var. Dört yıl önce 300 kişi kaçıp geldi Irak’a. Hepsi Kandil’den kaçtı. Erkekler çoğunlukta. Kadınlar daha ürkek. O nedenle kadınlar erkeklerle birlikte kaçıyor. Bir kısmı burada evlendi. Kaçanlardan bazıları sınır kapılarında insan kaçakçıları tarafından öldürüldü. Çoğunun yiyecek ekmeği yok.Kaçarken mayınlı topraklardan geçtim. Yıllarca aynı mevziyi, yemek kabını paylaştığım yoldaşlarım tarafından vurulmayı göze aldım. Yaşadıklarımı, acılarımı bir kenara bırakıp kendi sade hayatımı yaşayacaktım. Ama vicdanım adına, delirdikten sonra infaz edilen yoldaşlarımın gözlerindeki son çaresiz bakışın borcunu ödemek, Apo ve komuta kademesindeki erkeklerin tecavüzüne uğrayan kadınlar için yazmaya başladım. 1992’de en yakın arkadaşlarım, PKK’nın insanlık dışı gaddar sistemine karşı çıktıkları için, aynı gün mahkeme edilip ertesi gün hepimizin gözleri önünde kurşuna dizildiler. İki avuç toprakla cesetlerinin üstü örtüldü. Sabah gittiğimizde tilkiler, kurtlar tarafından parçalanıp yendiklerini gördüm. Öldürülen her arkadaşımla birlikte benim ruhum ölüyordu. Ben o dağların ardında yaşananları yazıyorum. 40 bin kişi öldürüldü diyorlar. Bir bakın, eski kadrolardan kimse yok. İç infazlar tahmin edilemeyecek kadar kabarık.kitaptan sonra beni öldüreceklerini çok iyi biliyorum. Ama benim kaybedeceğim bir şey yok ki. İnsan ölümü aştığında kaybedecek bir şeyi kalmıyor. Ben de ölümü birçok kere aştım. Bu nedenle korkmuyorum. PKK’da kendime ait olmamamın acizliğinden dolayı intiharı çok düşündüm. Ama cesaret edemedim, arkamdan korkak, zayıf ve iradesiz kadın, demelerini istemedim. İntiharlar da infazlar kadar çok PKK’da. Özellikle kadın intiharları... Sana bir vasiyetim var. Eğer bu röportajdan sonra bana bir şey olursa, muhakkak yaz. Onların yanına bırakmayın. Onların birer katil olduğunu bir ben biliyorum bir de onların kendileri. Apo için işlemeyecekleri cinayet yok. Bir de hiçbir yoldaşımın infazına katılmadım, yoldaşıma kurşun sıkmadım, bu açıdan vicdanım rahat, bu da bilinsin.Köye dönmek istiyorum. Annemi, kız kardeşlerimi 15 yıldır görmedim. Babamı almak için geçen yıl sınıra gittim. Ülkeme uzanan uzun yolları solumak için ağladım. Yıllar sonra ilk kez Türkiye’ye giden yolları gördüm. İçimde bir ses, git, ucunda ölüm olsa bile git, ülkende yaşa, dedi. Ben Türk düşmanı değildim, ülkeyi bölmek gibi bir hayalim yoktu. Durumum netleşecekse, hapse girmeyeceksem gelirim. Örgüt üyeliğinden aranıyorum. "Dön" çağrısına güvenmediğim için gelmedim. Af çıkarılırsa İbrahim Halil’i (Habur) aştığımda toprağı öpeceğim. Türkiye’de işlenmiş bir suçum yok. Türkiye’ye hiç inmedim, orada kimseyi öldürmedim. Bir gün döneceğimi biliyorum.Evin, çok güzel, fakir bir köylü kızıydı. Masmaviydi gözleri. Gece yarısı nöbette PKK’lı bir komutan tecavüz etti. Akli dengesini kaybetti. Çok tedavi gördü, elektrik şoku verildi. Gece yarısı oldu mu kızcağız çıldırıp kayalara tırmanıyordu. Herkes biliyordu. Tecavüzcü, Irak Kürdü’ydü. En sonunda Evin kaçtı ama kaçarken de mayına bastı. İki bacağını kaybetti. Köylüler bulup ailesine teslim ettiler. Evin, örgüt içindeki kadının trajik öyküsüdür.Türkiye’de af çıkarsa PKK çözülür. Çok insan yararlanır bu aftan. Herkes evine dönmek, yeni bir hayat kurmak istiyor. Burada tanıdığım o kadar çok insan var ki. Af çıksa PKK’nın içyüzü ortaya çıkar. Toplum rahat nefes alır. İtirafçılık olursa insanlar zarar görürler, kimse kimseye güvenmez. Af çıkarsa kimi köyünde çiftçilik yapar, kimi ailesine döner. Son beş yılda 5 bin kişinin PKK’dan koptuğunu biliyorum. Hepsi Avrupa’da değil. Kimi kayboldu, kimi kaybettirildi, kimi bulaşıkçı, kimi inşaatçı, kimi tuvalet temizliyor. Irak’takilerin özel korunması durumu yok. Zor durumdalar. Memlekete gitmek isteyip de gidememek büyük çöküş. ODTÜ mezunu ama burada inşaatta çalışıyor. Bunları kazanmak, Türkiye’ye kazandırır.Artık hiçbir şey ve insan uğruna o hayatı bir daha yaşamam. Öcalan’a tapmıştım. İnsanlar yaşadıkça akıllanıyor. Onun (Abdullah Öcalan) kurduğu sistemde birbirimize o kadar düşmandık ki başka düşmana ihtiyacımız yoktu. Birbirimizi yok etmek için psikolojik savaş, hakaretin haddi hesabı yok. Kadınlar arasında yapılmadık hakaret, dedikodu, ayakoyunu, kariyer uğruna insanları kullanma kalmamıştı. Yazdığım, herkesin öyküsü. Bana iyi davranmazsan, karşında ateş topu olurum.Öcalan’ın Şam’daki evine Yoğunlaştırma Evi denir. Yoğunlaştırma Evi’ne bakire, genç ve güzel kadınlar alınır. Vahşi, "çöl güzeli" kızlardan hoşlanırdı ama sarışınlara daha çok ilgi duyardı. Ben de Yoğunlaştırma Evi’ne çağrıldım. Apo bir gün beni masaja çağırdı. Gittim, ılık su dolu leğendeki ayaklarını yıkadım. Hani köy ağaları gibi. Beni azarlamaya başladı, bilmiyorum diye. Sırtüstü uzandı, şimdi bütün vücuduma, dedi. Anladım neler olacağını. Çünkü cinsel istek uyandığını gördüm. Soyun, dedi. Soyundum. İç çamaşırlarını da çıkar, dedi. Ayağa kalkıp sarılıp sıkınca korktum. Kendimi savunmak için Apo’ya vurdum. Üç yumruk attı yüzüme ve kafama. Küfretti bana. "Düşkün, fahişe, rezil kadın. Seni özgürleştirmeye, tabulaştırdığın zincirleri kırmaya çalışıyorum" dedi. Titrediğimi görünce kovdu beni. "Sen Kesire’sin. Beni onun gibi yok etmek istiyorsun. Sen köle kalacaksın!" diye bağırdı. Ama bu daha ilk denemeydi. Dışarıda bekleyen tecrübeli kadınlar, beni psikolojik olarak hazırlama toplantısına çağırdı. Ağladım. İçlerinden biri, Osmanlı Sarayı’ndaki Valide Sultan gibiydi. Beni azarladı. "Başkan bizi özgürleştiriyor. Sen özgürleşmek istemiyor musun? Başkana erkek gözüyle bakıyorsun. O başkan, o zincirlerimizi kıran bir peygamber." Beni akşam yemeğinden sonra yine çağırdı Apo. Bu kez çözümsüzdüm. Kime derdimi anlatacaktım? O ana kadar ölüme hiç bu kadar yaklaşmamıştım. Bekaretimi aldı. Sonraki günlerde iki kez daha sevişti benimle. Ben de Öcalan’dan intikamımı komutanlarıyla yatarak aldım. Çünkü beni gönderirken dağa, "Sakın bir erkekle ilişkini duymayayım. Benim yetiştirdiğim kadınlar, hiçbir erkekle ilişkiye girmemeli, sonuna kadar bana bağlı kalmalı" dedi. Beni infaz etmemelerinin nedeni, Öcalan’ın evinde kaldığım için rütbe verilmesi. Bu yüzden dokunmadılar bana.Ben de Apo’nun Şam’daki Yoğunlaştırma Evi’nden geçtim. Ben direnmedim, karşı koymayı aklımdan geçirmedim. Apo, benimle birlikte olduktan sonra çok vaatlerde bulundu. Kendimi hep onun için özel, başkanın kendisiyle birlikte olmaya layık gördüğü kadın sandım. Çok safmışım. Güya gözdesiydim, ayrıcalıklıydım. Yıllarca böyle sandım. Haber geldi, başkan beni Suriye’deki evine çağırıyordu yine. Hazırlandım. Heyecanlıydım. Yolda baktım, başka kadınlar da katıldı. Hepsi de güzel ve gençti. O uzun yolculukta birbirlerine anlattıklarına inanamadım. Çok sarsılmıştım. Bir mola sırasında su içeceğimi söyleyip kaçtım. Dağa döndüğümde bana bir şey yapmadılar. Ne de olsa başkanla yatma şerefine nail olmuş ayrıcalıklı bir kadın komutandım.Bir insanın doğasına, benliğine aykırı davranması ne kadar zorsa, PKK’da kadın olmak da o kadar zor. Çok doğal bir kahkaha, bir erkeğe bakış, bir söz ya da davranış, "Kadınlığını pazarlıyor" töhmeti altında kalmak için yeter. Kendimizi hep baskı altına alıyorduk."Erkek işbirlikçisi" deyimi, PKK’da son yıllarda çok yaygındı. Yukarıdan gönderilen bir kavram. Omuz omuza verdiğin erkek arkadaşlarınla samimi olursan bu suçlamaya maruz kalırsın. Cezası ölüme varacak yaptırımlar uygulanır. Ama kadınlar öldürülürken erkekler ödüllendirilir. Taliban sistemi gibi. Karşılıklı bir aşk yaşandığında dişi olan suçludur.Gönüllü kadınlardan idam mangası oluşturuluyordu mahkemeden sonra. İdama mahkum edilenin elleri bağlanıyor. Kurşuna dizilmeden az önce de gözleri. Kadınları kadınlar öldürüyordu.Merkez Komitesi’ne ve komutanlığa getirilen kadınların hemen hepsi, kendi cinsine ihanet edenler. Her şeyi biliyorlar. Hepsi Apo’nun evinde kaldı. En çok ezen, hakaret eden de o kadınlardı. Yıllarca savaşıp çocuk yaşta evinden ayrılan çok kadın infaz edildi. Aşık olduğu için "hain" damgası yiyip öldürüldü.Mardinli Rojin’in bir eli yoktu. Hamile bırakıldı, üst düzey bir komutan tarafından. Sonra da idam edildi. Tecavüzcü ise şu an Osman Öcalan’ın partisinde.Yedi aylık hamile Ronahi’nin Zele’de infaz edildiğini Osman Öcalan da Cemil Bayık da iyi biliyor. Çünkü onlar karar verdi. 1991’den beri arkadaşımdı. Suriye-Kamışlılı’ydı. Son isteğini sordular. "Çocuğumun hayatını bağışlayın. O doğduktan sonra beni idam edin" dedi. Suçu, biriyle ilişki kurmasıydı. Babasına dokunmadılar. Ronahi, karnını kuşakla bağlıyordu ama büyüyünce gizleyemedi. Açığa çıktı. İnfaz manga komutanı, Cemil Bayık’a, Ronahi’nin son isteğini söyledi. Cemil Bayık, "Hayır, idam edin" dedi. Karnında bebeğiyle öldürüldü.Korucu kızı Hevidan, çok küçüktü, 12 yaşındaydı. Baho Ağa’nın aşiretindendi. Apo’nun çıkardığı "korucu çocuklarını kaçırıp PKK’lı yapma" kanunuyla kaçırılıp getirilmişti. 1997 Temmuz’unda 16 yaşına basmıştı. Kaçma planları yaptı ama anlaşıldı, tutuklandı. Beni en çok etkileyen, yargılanıp infaz kararı verildikten sonra yapılanlardır. Hevidan’ın eline kazma kürek verip mezarını kazdırdılar. Temmuz sıcağında çukur açarken söylediği türkü dağlarda yankılanıyordu. Son isteği sorulduğunda af dilemedi. "Kahrolsun Apo" dedi, o köylü kızı. "Ahım sizin boynunuzda kalacak!" İnfaz mangasında tek bacağı protezli Siirtli Rengin, Hevidan’ı gözünü kırpmadan taradı. Ölmüyordu bir türlü. Kadınlar başını taşlarla ezerek öldürdüler.Eylem’i hiç unutamıyorum. Çok yakın arkadaşımdı. Siirt, Baykanlıydı. Çok güzeldi, sarışındı. Şakacıydı, bizi güldürürdü. Sevdiği erkekle ilişkisi açığa çıktı. 1994 yılıydı. Zagroslar’daydık. Bahardı. Birbirlerine kur yaparken yakalandılar. Erkek kaçıp gitti. Eylem, Avaşin Suyu’ndaki bir kayanın üzerine çıkıp beklemeye başladı. Kaçıp gideceği, derdini anlatacağı kimse yoktu ki. Eylem’i aramaya çıktık. Erkekler öndeydi ve ellerinde silahlarla arıyorlardı Eylem’i. Baktım, Eylem, elini yüzünü yıkıyor. Kalktı, bize döndü. Elinde bomba vardı. Sevdiği erkek de aramızdaydı. Tek tek yüzümüze baktı, sevdiği yüreksiz adamın gözlerinde durdu uzun uzun. Sonra "Yaklaşmayın, kimseye zarar vermek istemiyorum" dedi. Biliyordu, sonunun ne olacağını. Bombanın pimini çekip patlattı. Havaya uçtu. Vücudunun bazı parçalarını Avaşin Suyu alıp götürdü. Yüreğini, hayallerini, sırlarını da. İntihardan sonra yapılan toplantıda Eylem’in dişiliğini kullandığı, erkeği ihanete sürüklediği söylendi. O sevdiği erkek ise ayağa kalktı. "Beni kışkırttı. Beni yoldan çıkarmak için cezbeden bir şeytandı. Düzelmem için bir fırsat verilmesini talep ediyorum" dedi. "Şak şak" alkışladılar. Apo hakkında sloganlar attılar. Ben de alkışlayıp sloganlara katıldım. Katılmasaydım sonumun ne olacağı belliydi. Sevdiği erkek, özeleştiriden sonra ödüllendirildi. Eline çok güzel bir silah verildi, komutan oldu. Eylem, benim içimde büyük bir yara.Tecavüz edenlerin cezalandırıldığına hiç tanık olmadım. Tecavüze uğrayan kadın hep susmak zorundaydı. Eğer susmazsa erkek, yetkisine yaslanıyordu. Merkez Komitesi üyelerinden biliyorum, yetkileri nedeniyle istediği kadınla birlikte oldular. Kadın asla şikayetçi olamadı. Kadın bir raporla bildirmek istese bile o rapor, ancak tecavüzcü komutanının eliyle Suriye’ye ulaştırılabilirdi. Komutan hiç kendi tecavüzünü yukarıya bildirir mi! | {
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President Mamnoon Hussain on Thursday addressed a joint session of Parliament to mark the beginning of the ruling party’s final year in government amidst noisy protest from the opposition.
Although protests were in full swing during the earlier part of the president's speech, the assembly hall quietened down halfway through after opposition lawmakers walked out.
From the beginning, the opposition went all-out to disrupt the president, with some lawmakers whistling, others sloganeering, and still more thumping their desks as shouts of "Go Nawaz Go" and "traitor" rang out in Parliament.
The opposition's main contention is the government’s refusal to broadcast the opposition’s budget speeches live on PTV.
PML-N leaders, including the prime minister, however appeared determined to ignore the protests and sporadically expressed their support for the president by rapping their desks.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and PML-N lawmakers during the parliamentary session.
Earlier, a source in the Presidency had told Dawn that President Mamnoon Hussain was well-prepared to face “any untoward situation during the joint session” and he would continue his speech, even if opposition members tried to disrupt it.
“The president is a head of the state and he should not be targeted for political point-scoring,” the source said.
The president's speech
In his address, President Hussain congratulated the nation on the continuation of the political process.
"For the progress and development of our nation, the political process should be freed from personal interests," he said.
Speaking about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the president said: "For the last several decades, illogical policies have spoiled our precious resources. Our new state-friendly policies, connecting the region through CPEC and power generation projects are the result of a realisation that past policies have greatly damaged the country."
The president added that CPEC will bring progress and development for the entire region.
"With increased per capita income, Pakistan has become one of the 25 largest economies of the world, and all economic indicators are positive." President Hussain said during his address.
Talking about Fata and Gilgit-Baltistan, he said that the government has allocated significant funds to bring these areas on a par with other parts of the country.
Discussing the ongoing power-crisis in the country, the president said that a lot of work needs to be done in this regard. He added that he had suggested last year to utilise Gilgit-Baltistan's resources in connection with production of electricity. The president said that infrastructure should be built to generate electricity from under-construction dams in the area and supply it to the national grid.
The president also highlighted the issue of Kashmir and bilateral relations between Pakistan and India.
Terming Kashmir as the incomplete agenda of the partition of the subcontinent, the president said: "India has become a major obstacle for durable peace in the region."
"Instead of positively responding to Pakistan's peace efforts, India sent Kulbhushan Jadhav, terrorists and other spies," he added.
The president also condemned the May 31 bombing in Afghanistan, saying that the two countries should work towards sustainable peace in the region. Discussing Pak-US relations, the presidents noted that the ties "are of significant importance."
"We intend to further strengthen our relations with the rising economies of the world," he added. He said that the country's recent achievements in terms of foreign relations are a positive sign.
Taking about Pakistan Army's sacrifices, the president said, "Operations like Zarb-e-Azb, Raddul Fasad will be executed successfully and strengthen the country further."
President Hussain also stressed the need to devise a new narrative for the nation.
Khurshid Shah
Leader of the Opposition Khurshid Shah told media outside Parliament that the opposition had unanimously decided to boycott the president's speech.
"The opposition is clear that the rulers themselves are behind Nehal Hashmi, they are scapegoating him just like they had done Tariq Fatmi," Shah said.
"We have been observing for the last several years that the president does not address the nation on national issues," he said.
"The president never focused on major issues like corruption and terrorism. More recently, Fata has emerged as an issue Fata. It is related to the president but he does not pay attention to it. A mockery has been made of Fata," he added. | {
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By: Mark Elliott
Last week, experts revealed a security concern with the Android™ media player called Stagefright.
Sprint is aware of the concern. Google and our equipment manufacturers are working hard to develop software patches, and Sprint is supporting their efforts to deploy these patches as quickly as possible.
Software patches for some Sprint-enabled devices are already available. We expect the equipment manufacturers to release updates for additional devices over the coming weeks. When a patch is available for your device, a notification will be sent to your phone alerting you of its availability.
You may be wondering what you can do to protect your device before a patch becomes available. Several cybersecurity experts proposed ways to minimize your risk. Sprint partner Lookout – a mobile cybersecurity company – has posted steps they believe may reduce exposure from Stagefright: What you need to know about the new Android vulnerability, “Stagefright”. Although Sprint hasn’t evaluated and cannot vouch for any specific recommendations, we wanted to share this information in case our customers find it helpful.
Mark Elliott is a communications manager for the Wireless Devices team at Sprint. Based in Boston, he is well versed in the company’s business devices, tablets, push-to-talk products and Wi-Fi Calling. Mark can be reached at [email protected]. | {
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McLaren has confirmed Lando Norris will feature in the opening Formula 1 practice session for the Russian Grand Prix weekend in Sochi this Friday, combining the outing with his Formula 2 race duties.
F2 title contender Norris was confirmed earlier this month to be stepping up into a full-time McLaren F1 seat in 2019, having impressed the team during his F1 practice outings at Spa and Monza.
McLaren confirmed it would be giving Norris a number of additional FP1 outings across the remainder of the 2018 season in order to help his preparation for his F1 debut next year, with his next appearance coming in Russia this Friday.
Despite previously saying it would not look to enter Norris to FP1 on weekends where he also had F2 duties, the British youngster will now feature at the Sochi Autodrom behind the wheel of the McLaren MCL33.
"Lando will once again drive in FP1 in Russia, which will be a busy weekend for him, as he combines his F1 duties with his F2 championship campaign," sporting director Gil de Ferran said in McLaren's race preview.
"Nevertheless, this will hopefully be another positive step in his development."
Norris enters the penultimate round of the F2 season in Sochi trailing championship leader George Russell by 22 points, having not recorded a victory since the opening race of the year in Bahrain.
Norris is one of three juniors set to appear in FP1 on Friday, with Artem Markelov (Renault) and Antonio Giovinazzi (Sauber) both slated to feature in the 90-minute practice session as well. | {
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House Democrats are digging into the Trump administration’s dealings with Saudi Arabia, making its plan to sell nuclear technology to the kingdom the subject of the first major investigation by the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
The investigation was announced Tuesday in conjunction with the release of an interim report that details allegations made by unnamed whistleblowers that senior White House officials ignored warnings from legal and ethics advisers to stop pursuing a plan to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia.
It hits at a nexus of controversies from President Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE’s first two years in office, including the Trump-Saudi relationship, the downfall of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and the business ties of Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner Jared Corey KushnerAbraham Accords: New hope for peace in Middle East Tenants in Kushner building file lawsuit alleging dangerous living conditions Trump hosts Israel, UAE, Bahrain for historic signing MORE.
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Outside experts say the whistleblower aspect of the case likely sparked Chairman’s (D-Md.) interest in prioritizing the investigation over a litany of other issues Democrats have been eager to investigate.
“The House Government Oversight Committee has a history of investigating activities and decisions executed by the White House, regardless of political party,” Mark Zaid, a Washington-based lawyer specializing in national security cases, said in an email. “It especially takes serious those concerns brought to it by whistleblowers.”
The 24-page report, prepared by the Democratic staff of the committee, focuses on the first three months of Trump’s presidency, when whistleblowers said Flynn and aide Derek Harvey pushed a proposal to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia. The proposal came from a private company for which Flynn served as an adviser.
“Based on this snapshot of events, the committee is now launching an investigation to determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy,” the report said.
Cummings also sent letters Tuesday requesting further information to a wide range of subjects: the White House; the departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, State and Treasury; the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the CIA; Flynn’s company, the Flynn Intel Group; the private company pushing the nuclear plan, IP3 International; a company run by a former business colleague of Flynn’s, ACU Strategic Partners; Trump confidant Tom Barrack; and Barrack’s investment firm, Colony NorthStar.
A spokesman for the National Security Council (NSC) did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment Tuesday.
Republicans on the committee said Democrats released the interim report without their input, accusing the majority of partisanship.
“We did not receive a draft of the report until last night and have not had the opportunity to fully evaluate the material it presents,” minority spokeswoman Charli Huddleston said in a statement. “This is a delicate and nuanced issue that Chairman Cummings is approaching without bipartisan input and with far flung requests for information.”
The report from Democratic staff says that Cummings made several requests to Republicans for investigations of the matters in the probe, but that they went unfulfilled when Democrats were in the minority.
The inquiry comes as U.S.-Saudi relations are in precarious state. Fed up at the kingdom over the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Yemen civil war, Congress is on the verge of forcing Trump’s hand on the issue and passing a resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudis in Yemen.
The Oversight report makes several references to Khashoggi and the Trump administration’s “equivocation” in responding to his death.
The report also puts a spotlight back on Flynn, who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.
Flynn served as Trump’s national security adviser for 24 days before resigning when it was revealed he misled Vice President Pence on the conversations with the Russian.
Under U.S. law, the United States must enter into what’s known as a 123 agreement with other countries to sell them nuclear technology. Such deals are meant to ensure nonproliferation standards are met.
The administration has previously acknowledged officials such as Energy Secretary Rick Perry Rick PerryEnergy secretary questions consensus that humans cause climate change OVERNIGHT ENERGY: Democrats push resolution to battle climate change, sluggish economy and racial injustice | Senators reach compromise on greenhouse gas amendment stalling energy bill | Trump courts Florida voters with offshore drilling moratorium OVERNIGHT ENERGY: Trump signs major conservation bill into law | Senate votes to confirm Energy's No. 2 official | Trump Jr. expresses opposition to Pebble Mine project MORE have been negotiating with the Saudis on a 123 agreement. And lawmakers in both parties have expressed concern at the negotiations since Saudi Arabia has said it would not accept a deal that includes the so-called gold standard, or prohibitions on enriching uranium and reprocessing spent fuel to produce plutonium that are essential steps in producing nuclear weapons.
The report released Tuesday said whistleblowers came forward because they were concerned about “abnormal acts” and “a working environment inside the White House marked by chaos, dysfunction, and backbiting.”
“And they have warned about political appointees ignoring directives from top ethics advisors at the White House who repeatedly and unsuccessfully ordered senior Trump administration officials to halt their efforts," the report said.
The report said efforts started in the earliest days of the Trump administration to push a plan from IP3 International. Public filings say Flynn was an adviser for a subsidiary of IP3 from June 2016 to December 2016 at the same time he worked on Trump’s presidential campaign and transition.
Career staff warned the efforts would run afoul of the law requiring 123 agreements, but Flynn and Harvey, then the head of NSC’s Middle East and North African affairs, pressed ahead, according to the report.
The National Security Council’s ethics and legal advisers also concluded that Flynn had a potential conflict of interest that could violate the law and advised NSC staff to stop all work, the report added.
Days after Trump’s inauguration, the report said, IP3 sent Flynn a memo intended for Trump to approve that endorsed the company’s so-called Middle East Marshall Plan and named Barrack as the special representative to carry out the nuclear power proposal.
Barrack is a close friend of Trump’s who ran his inaugural committee, which is under separate investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. Last week, Barrack defended the Saudis by saying atrocities in the United States are “equal or worse” to their killing of Khashoggi; he later apologized for the comments.
Barrack’s name also appeared in the nuclear plans in mid-March 2017, according to the report, during a meeting where then-deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland reportedly said Trump told Barrack that he could lead the implementation of the plan.
On March 24, 2017, multiple employees raised concerns to the NSC legal adviser, according to the report. After that, then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster told staff they should stop all work on the proposal, according to the report.
“However, NSC staff remained concerned because the same individuals continued their work on IP3’s proposal,” the report said.
The report also notes ties between Kushner and one of the companies that could benefit from the sale of nuclear reactors to the Saudis, Westinghouse Electric. In 2018, a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management acquired the bankrupt Westinghouse. Meanwhile, in August, Brookfield purchased a partnership stake in 666 Fifth Avenue, a building owned by Kushner’s family company.
The report comes a week before Kushner is embarking on a trip to sell his Middle East peace plan. The trip includes a stop in Riyadh and the administration envisions Saudi Arabia playing an integral role in the plan.
The investigation into the Trump administration’s dealing with the Saudis comes after Cummings in January opened an investigation into the security clearance process the at White House.
The new probe is separate from matters known to be under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller Robert (Bob) MuellerCNN's Toobin warns McCabe is in 'perilous condition' with emboldened Trump CNN anchor rips Trump over Stone while evoking Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting The Hill's 12:30 Report: New Hampshire fallout MORE, meaning Democrats do not have to wait for him to go forward.
“This is one of the few issues that doesn’t touch the Russian interference directly, and doesn’t seem to be tied to a counterintelligence plot,” said Mieke Eoyang, a former congressional staffer who is now vice president for Third Way's national security program. “This means that they don’t have to wait for the Mueller investigation or other criminal investigation to conclude before diving in.” | {
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Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is like a bizarre fever dream.
Stick with me here: You’ve got Mario and a host of Mushroom Kingdom mainstays rocking guns and squad tactics to take down hordes of Ubisoft’s insane Rabbids. It raises the question how this game even came to be.
And yet, contrary to any sense of logic, it all works. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle brings all these disparate pieces together in one of the most unlikely success stories of the year.
Contrary to any sense of logic, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle works
The set-up for Mario + Rabbids is weirdly complex. A mysterious programmer has designed a VR helmet capable of merging two objects together. In an early example, a lamp and a flower combine to make, er, a lampflower?
Meanwhile, time-traveling Rabbids in a washing machine (because sure) stumble across the helmet before finding themselves in the Mushroom Kingdom. One of the Rabbids dons the helmet and begins merging everything it lays its eyes on. The end result? A Rabbid dressed like Luigi, one dressed like Donkey Kong, one combined with a piranha plant, and so on and so forth.
While most of the Rabbids are unhinged and troublesome, those dressed as heroes join forces with Mario to stop the chaos from spreading. And we’re off.
The story is mostly delivered through the dialogue of a friendly AI and various familiar faces you come across, and it’s cute but nothing special. There are plenty of attempts at humor, but most of it seems aimed at kids under 10, rather than trying to reach for more challenging gags that adults would also appreciate.
However, that kid-friendly tone makes Mario + Rabbids the best introduction to the squad-based tactics genre I’ve ever seen. Simple presentation and a clean UI help to demonstrate concepts like cover, chance to hit and status effects.
Most tactics games are incredibly daunting because the player is constantly presented with new choices and failure points. Mario + Rabbids cuts most of that out, focusing instead on just core combat mechanics, minor character customization and some basic puzzle solving. There’s no permadeath, no base building, nothing to distract you from figuring out the absolute core concepts of the genre.
the combat in Mario + Rabbids is tremendously strategic
And yet, despite the mask of simplicity, the combat in Mario + Rabbids is tremendously strategic. Mobility is king in this game, and units combine forces in fantastic ways. The team jump maneuver allows you to launch a unit across the map with the help of a squadmate, reaching adorably colorful sniper towers with ease. While most of the heroes utilize jumping to get vertical, Mario is able to butt-stomp enemies when he lands on them for extra damage. A common tactic would be to send, say, Rabbid Luigi ahead, acting as a springboard for Mario’s eventual death-from-above attack.
These decisions play a large part in whether you’ll succeed in the game’s skirmishes. Mario + Rabbids’ difficulty spikes dramatically as it goes on, with new enemy types constantly being added. Knowing when to taunt melee-heavy brutes to give your sniper some breathing space, or to go straight for the enemy healers before taking down a boss, is crucial to victory.
Don’t worry, though. Mario + Rabbids remains friendly to children and tactics-deficient adults. While there are no difficulty settings to choose from at the outset, before every battle you’re able to activate “Easy Mode” for that single fight. Turning this handicap on gives your team bonus health to make things more manageable.
While the accessibility is nice, some of Mario + Rabbids’ features feel a little too basic for their own good. There are unique skill trees for all 10 playable heroes, but there’s not much variety in hero builds. Just about every Rabbid Peach is going to play similarly to every other Rabbid Peach toward the end of the game. Weapons, too, feel pretty rigid and samey.
Offering up some more variety, there are simple puzzles scattered throughout the Mushroom Kingdom, designed to break up the action between battles. These usually involve flipping switches and pushing boxes, but it’s nothing super riveting. Small bonus stages allow you to unlock more weapons, but clunky movement controls paired with a locked camera angle make them more frustrating than fun. Normally the stiff movement controls are passable, but toss in a time-based objective and their failings become obvious.
While moving around the world doesn’t feel great, at least the environments you’re exploring are lively. Common Mario locales like deserts and lava fields are filled with visual easter eggs, usually of Rabbids in various states of shenanigans. For example, one simple box puzzle ended with the discovery of a hidden disco ball in an ice cave, surrounded by frozen dancing Rabbids. These touches help add life to otherwise sterile sequences between battles.
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Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is cute without sacrificing challenge
Mario + Rabbids manages to walk a narrow road, offering up a legitimately challenging squad tactics experience without alienating the family-friendly Mario audience. While it doesn’t quite have the full layer of spit and polish of an in-house title, Ubisoft’s game comes damn close to capturing that Nintendo magic.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was reviewed using a final “retail” downloadable Switch code provided by Ubisoft. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here .
Our review of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle 8 out of 10 Platform Nintendo Switch
Publisher Ubisoft
Release Date Aug 29, 2017
Nintendo Switch Score 8
Developer Ubisoft About Polygon Reviews
Listen to Polygon’s Quality Control podcast for more on our review. | {
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A measure that would have split the state into separate parts will no longer appear on the ballot
This article is more than 2 years old
This article is more than 2 years old
A measure that would divide California into three parts will not appear on the ballot in November, the state supreme court decided Wednesday.
The justices ordered the secretary of state not to put the ballot initiative before voters, saying significant questions have been raised about its validity. The court will now consider the merits of a challenge brought by an environmental group.
The Planning and Conservation League argues that dividing the nation’s most populous state into three would drastically change California’s government structure beyond what can be accomplished through a ballot initiative.
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The venture capitalist Tim Draper, who has spent more than $1.7m supporting the initiative, has said it would be inappropriate for the court to block it from going before voters.
Neither side immediately responded to requests for comment on the court’s ruling.
The initiative, which could appear on a future ballot if the court ultimately rules in its favor, seeks to divide the state into northern California, California and southern California. Its supporters argue the state has become ungovernable because of its size, wealth disparities and geographic diversity.
Northern California would comprise the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, Sacramento and counties north of the state capital. California would be a strip of land along the coast stretching from Los Angeles to Monterey. Southern California would include Fresno and the surrounding farming communities, reaching all the way to San Diego and the Mexican border. | {
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I enjoy this femmes boobs a LOT! Schoolgirl will get picked up within the park by means of a kinky dude with excellent sport and earlier than ya are aware of it newborn is deep throating beef whistle. Schoolgirl has an epic lil’ backside and when newborn climbs on most sensible of him to get humped we get a fine sight of it. He impales her taut cooter in a plenty of of various tactics till he has to dump a pouch and shoots his jism. | {
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Recently, I made good use of Michael Parker's CLAWK, a Lisp-embedded variant of AWK.
So far, I had used the real AWK, along with perl and other parts of the Unix toolbox to analyze data from experiments, and munge it into HTML and LaTeX tables. However, this time I expected the experiments to be carried out in a run–tweak–rerun fashion with several iterations, and I did not want to reparse several hundred megabytes each time, just for a change in table layout, or for adding another analysis. (Also, I had not much time for lispy things recently, so this was a good way to sneak some Lisp back into my current C++ hell...)
Enter CLAWK. The following function parses my benchmark data into Lisp objects:
( defvar *foo-table* ( make-hash-table :test 'equal )) ( defawk parse-foo-benchmark ( &aux model ) ( #/^memtime/ ( when model ( emit-model model *foo-table* )) ( let (( path ( parse-namestring $6 ))) ( setf model ( make-instance 'foo-model-record :filename path )))) ( #/^Instantiator: Explored/ ( setf ( get-states model ) $#3 ( get-transitions model ) $#6 ( get-bfs-levels model ) $#9 ( completed? model ) t )) (( string= $6 "elapsed" ) ( setf ( get-generation-time model ) $#5 )) (( string= $13 "RSS" ) ( setf ( get-generation-memory model ) ( parse-integer $15 :junk-allowed t ))) ( END ( when model ( emit-model model *foo-table* )) *foo-table* ))
Parsing the bulk of my data with the above function takes about 80 seconds, probably slower than it would be with AWK. However, once parsed I have all the data available at my fingertips inside the Lisp image. I can prod it with the SLIME inspector, identify outliers, and play around with it in the REPL until I am satisfied. In addition, I can selectively rerun parts of the experiments, and parse just the newly produced output to update the in-memory representation, again in no time flat. Beats the Unix everything is a byte stream way every day of the week.
Rendering the results as HTML is a breeze with CL-WHO. The same holds for reordering columns, marking interesting entries programmatically, cross-referencing with other entries (or earlier versions of the data) and refining the analyses as much as I wish, with instant feedback.
Unfortunately, CLAWK has acquired some bitrot since its release in 2002 (?). I needed to tweak it slightly to make it compile (only tested with SBCL). When I tried to contact Michael Parker, his email bounced, so I decided to put up a patched version locally until the changes are folded back into his distribution. In addition, CLAWK is now ASDF-installable (along with its dependency, REGEX), courtesy of Redshank's ASDF Defsystem skeleton.
If time permits, I will fix up the code some more to get rid of the warnings, and perhaps allow CL-PPCRE as alternative regular expression engine. However, patches from the open-source fairies are very welcome, too. | {
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Sky Sports' Craig Slater catches up with new McLaren Executive Director Zak Brown as they discuss how the team will get back to winning ways Sky Sports' Craig Slater catches up with new McLaren Executive Director Zak Brown as they discuss how the team will get back to winning ways
New McLaren boss Zak Brown has said 'never say never' to Lewis Hamilton returning to the team - but reiterated that returning the fallen superpowers to winning ways remains his priority.
After previously spending the entirety of his F1 career at McLaren, Hamilton left for Mercedes at the end of 2012 in search of a new challenge.
Since then Hamilton has won two world championship while McLaren have failed to win a single race in the last four seasons.
"I will move heaven and earth to have the best two race-car drivers in our car," Brown told Sky Sports News HQ. "Right now, we have them and Stoffel is going to be outstanding. Lewis is an awesome driver who has a great history here and I certainly wouldn't rule anything out. But right now, I'm happy with what we have."
In a separate interview with Sky F1, Brown then reiterated: "You can't rule out anything for 2019, 2020. We will see what our current drivers want to do."
There is, however, no imminent prospect of Hamilton leaving Mercedes - especially when the Silver Arrows remain the sport's dominant force. The 31-year-old extended his deal with Mercedes for a further three years last summer while McLaren have confirmed Vandoorne and Fernando Alonso as their drivers for next season with the semi-retiring Jenson Button under contract for 2018.
In any case, McLaren's driver line-up is the least of Brown's current concerns as he bids to steady the Woking ship after Ron Dennis' departure and another season of on-track frustration. Ending McLaren's four-year victory famine is, without hesitation, Brown's overriding priority as he settles into his new role as executive director of an F1 superpower fallen on very hard times.
"We have got to get back to winning soon," agreed Brown. "But the great news is that when you walk around the facility this is a championship team. I don't want to put a timetable on it, because that is always dangerous, but everyone is trying to win as hard as possible.
McLaren's new management hierarchy: Brown (centre), Eric Boullier (left) and Jonathan Neale (right)
"If you look at the resources we have, the people we have, and the drivers we have, we are going to get there and we are going to get there sooner rather than later."
It's understood that Brown received a job offer from Liberty Media, the sport's prospective new owners, before agreeing to join McLaren just days after Dennis was ousted as chief executive. Dennis had already approached Brown about moving to McLaren but just what ultimately persuaded the 45-year-old American businessman to reject the opportunity to work for the sport's new rulers?
"Because l couldn't' wear a McLaren shirt there! This is my favourite team, always has been. I grew up idolising the McLaren-Honda, Senna-Prost era so to be sitting here at McLaren-Honda with two world champions is just too special and too good an opportunity to pass up." | {
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Protesters to call for probe into killing, safety for Avni’s cubs and resignation of Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar
Filmmakers, actors and animal rights activists will take part in a global march demanding justice for tigress Avni and her two 10-month-old cubs on Sunday. The march will begin at 4 p.m. at Worli sea face (Common Man statue) up to Shivaji Park in Dadar. The Global March is expected to touch 22 cities across India and 11 countries around the world.
Also Read Tigress Avni killing: National Tiger Conservation Authority forms new probe team
Actor Rupali Ganguly, who is one of the founding members of the Global March Campaign, said animals could not afford expensive lawyers and people had to join hands to become the voice of the voiceless. Ms. Ganguly said, “I am doing this so that when my son grows up he does not have to see a statue of a tiger to know how [the animal] looks.”
‘Guidelines flouted’
Ms. Ganguly said, “[The Ralegaon forest in Yavatmal] was encroached upon by industrialists. Then Avni was declared a man-eater. Flouting the court’s guideline of shooting her as a last resort, [they] murdered [Avni anyway].”
Also Read Tigress Avni shot dead in late night encounter
The protesters will be demanding safety for Avni’s cubs, an investigation into the killing and the resignation of Forest Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar. Ms. Ganguly said, “Firstly, the cubs have to be located and provided a safe habitat. Secondly, we have to stop replacing forests with concrete buildings. The natural habitats of these animals have to be saved from encroachers. Also, Mr. Mungantiwar should resign as the Forest Minister, if all he can do is support the industrialists at the cost of the environment.”
Gurpreet Singh Chawla, animal activist and co-organiser, said, “On the one hand, we have declared the tiger as our national animal and on the other, we are wrongfully accusing them and killing them. We demand special investigation teams be formed from outside Maharashtra to look into the matter. The animals also have a right to live.” | {
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On Thursday, the United States Marshals Service posted a notice that it will be administering the sale of the over 29,600 bitcoins seized in the Silk Road case. At present exchange rates, those bitcoins are worth over $17.5 million.
Further Reading Feds ready to auction off $25 million in Silk Road Bitcoin
These bitcoins resided in six different wallets found on Silk Road servers and do not include the “bitcoins contained in wallet files that resided on certain computer hardware belonging to Ross William Ulbricht, that were seized on or about October 24, 2013.”
The USMS said that the first deadline for bidders will be 9am Eastern Time on June 16, 2014.
All bidders must complete the government’s Bidder Registration Form (PDF), which requires that you provide a copy of a government-issued ID as well as a $200,000 deposit sent by wire transfer from an American bank. The government added that the highest bidder will win, and he or she cannot finance its payment in installments—the winner must pay the full amount in cash.
The USMS added one final stipulation.
“The USMS will not sell to any person who is acting on behalf of or in concert with the Silk Road and/or Ross William Ulbricht, and bidders will be required to so certify,” the USMS stated.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York had previously announced that it would be selling the seized bitcoins back in January 2014.
Joshua Dratel, Ulbricht's attorney, told Ars that this auction is "designed to get maximum value for the property that was seized."
"However, I was not informed or consulted about the particular actions (and not saying I had a right to be), so I don't know the details of the decision-making as to why it happened right now," Dratel continued. "Also, noting again for clarity that Ross has filed a claim only for the bitcoins seized from his laptop (PDF), not those from the Silk Road servers." | {
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Everyone is out trying to catch the bombing suspects And i'm just sitting here masturbating
393 shares | {
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ASHEVILLE – The N.C. Department of Transportation has reduced the speed limit in work zone areas of Interstate 26 between I-40 in Buncombe County and U.S. 64 in Henderson County.
The speed limit has been reduced to 55 mph in areas where lanes have been narrowed, bridge work is taking place or the contractor is performing other work. The speed limit will remain at 60 mph where no work taking place and lanes have not been narrowed.
“The speed limit reductions should raise awareness of those traveling through the work zone,” Division 13 Assistant Construction Engineer Nathan Moneyham said. “It is critical for drivers to slow down and be alert, especially when there are construction activities and backups.”
The limits on I -26 are as follows:
I-26 East from I-240/I-40/I-26 interchange to Exit 37, Long Shoals Road, will be posted 55 mph.
I-26 East from Exit 37, Long Shoals Road, to the Henderson County line will remain 60 mph.
I-26 East from the Henderson County Line to Exit 49, Four Seasons Boulevard, will be posted 55 mph.
I-26 West from the Exit 49, Four Seasons Boulevard, to the Henderson County line will be posted 55 mph.
I-26 West from the Henderson County line to approximately ½ mile prior to Exit 33, Brevard Road, will remain 60 mph.
I-26 West through the current Brevard Road interchange project to I-240/I-40/I-26 interchange will remain 55 mph.
In the six years from 2012 to 2018, more than 35,600 crashes and 173 deaths occurred in work zones in North Carolina. Last year alone, there were more than 7,300 work zone crashes, and 32 people died.
Safe and efficient work zones begin with proper planning design and implementation. But drivers must watch for changing condition and exercise caution when they approach and drive through work zones. Driving on I-26 in the coming years will be no different.
Everyone from project planners and designers to motorcycle, car and truck drivers, along with passengers and law enforcement officers have a responsibility to keep the work zone safe by performing their roles.
Driver-related factors that affect work zone crashes include speeding, distractions, inattentive driving and aggressive driving. Rear-end crashes are the most common collisions in work zones, and often those are the result of following too close or in combination with distracted driving.
“The signs remind drivers of the new speed limits and to be careful in the work zone,” Division 14 construction engineer Ted Adams said. “Everybody maintaining the speed limit, paying attention to their driving and being aware of their surroundings will help each individual driver and everybody else on the interstate too.”
Drivers should…
Be patient
Prepare for delays by leaving early
Stay alert and be aware of surroundings
Pay attention to new traffic patterns
Turn on headlights to increase vehicle visibility
Eliminate in-car distractions
Maintain the posted speed limit
Additional statistics from 2018 | {
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Около 200 человек в масках напали вечером 17 января на пассажирский поезд и устроили массовую драку с болельщиками, направлявшимися на соревнования по смешанным боевым искусствам в Сопот. Нападение предположительно устроили фанаты футбольного клуба «Лехия» (Гданьск), а их противниками оказались фанаты «Арки» (Гдыня).
В одном из вагонов был сорван стоп-кран, после чего нападавшие начали забрасывать поезд камнями. Потом они ворвались в вагоны и устроили драку, в результате которой пострадали около 10 человек. Пострадавшие с тяжелыми травмами доставлены в больницу. Полиция начала расследование происшествия. | {
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NFL: Storms on Both Coasts Could Put a Damper to the Conference Championship Games But it's not as if any of these quarterbacks aren't used to rough weather.
New York -- A pair of storms on both coasts could bring wet weather to both NFL Conference Championship games on Sunday.
It’s not like any of these quarterbacks aren’t used to rough weather -- from Seattle to Green Bay to Indianapolis to Boston -- but a slick ball can result in more fumbles and messy throws for even the most experienced quarterback.
The NFC Championship game will be played at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, where Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks will go up against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers at 3:05 p.m. ET.
Both are previous Super Bowl winners and fully equipped at playing in bad weather, from heavy rain to frigid temperatures.
This weekend, multiple storms will be moving through the Pacific Northwest, with the worst weather expected Saturday night into Sunday, potentially putting a damper on the game. Heavy rain is expected at times and as much as half a foot is possible by Sunday night.
In addition, gusty winds will not help. Luckily, the worst of the rain looks to taper off just in time for kickoff, with a lingering chance of showers along with a southern breeze.
Across the country, a storm is expected to develop on Sunday and move up the East coast just in time for the AFC Championship game. Tom Brady and the New England Patriots will play Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., at 6:40 p.m. ET. Brady has been to five Super Bowls, the most of any quarterback playing this weekend, and has won three.
The good news is that temperatures across the Northeast will be unseasonably mild, in the 40s, which is a bit too warm for snow. Average temperatures in Foxborough for mid-January are in the 30s, so we are running about 10 degrees above normal.
Although some snow could still mix in, precipitation should stay to mostly rain, with some downpours possible during the game. The track and intensity of this storm needs to be watched carefully over the next 24 hours since there is still the potential for it to move farther from the coast, which would lower heavy rain chances significantly.
Neither storm will be strong enough to put a damper on the fans, as they get ready to watch their team's journey to the Super Bowl.
After all, this is football, not baseball. Games will be played no matter what -- even if that means cheering in a poncho. | {
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With the imminent launch of Gears of War 4, the developers of The Coalition warned fans about possible spoilers that could be filtered in the coming days. In this regard, Adam Fletcher, director of community, asked the players to “stay vigilant” from the information that could ruin your gaming experience.
Since the game reached its Gold stage, it is possible that many of the copies of the game are already on its way to your destination in different distribution stores worldwide. This carries the risk of loss, theft or anticipated sale of Gears of War 4, which will surely bring game information on the internet before it is officially released.
Gears fans: Just a heads up, more spoilers may appear in the coming days. Stay vigilante if you want to keep things pure. — Adam Fletcher (@PezRadar) September 28, 2016
Another possibility is that The Coalition itself has planned to talk more about this issue, its history and its characters. For many players it may seem encouraging to receive more information before launch, but for others it will be more gratifying to discover all by themselves.
Also today, Microsoft can not help but shed new information substantiating the great work invested in this project. The company has confirmed via Twitter that users who have pre-ordered the game via Xbox One will have access to the pre-loading of the game today with a size of 54.6 GB.
Gears of War 4 is scheduled to debut on October 11 on Xbox One and PC simultaneously. This is another title with Xbox Play Anywhere program. | {
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Un corte masivo de energía dejó sin suministro de electricidad a alrededor de 42 mil personas en el centro de Manhattan, en la ciudad de Nueva York, según informó la compañía de servicios públicos a través de su cuenta en la red social Twitter.
"Estamos trabajando para restaurar la energía a 42.000 clientes, principalmente en el oeste de Manhattan. Proporcionaremos actualizaciones a medida que las recibamos. Gracias", expresó la empresa de distribución eléctrica Con Edison.
New York goes dark. Looks like the high rises around us are without power too @ Hell’s Kitchen pic.twitter.com/jbcCD5Hniq — Hiroko Tabuchi (@HirokoTabuchi) 14 de julio de 2019
El apagón fue resultado de un problema en la red eléctica durante la tarde del pasado sábado, vinculada a la forma en que pasan la electricidad de una parte de la ciudad a otra para satisfacer la demanda, señaló el alcalde de Nueva York, Bill de Blasio, que estaba haciendo campaña en Iowa para su candidatura a la presidencia.
Por otro lado, los servicios de Bomberos de Nueva York registraron numerosos incendios de transformadores y varios shows de Broadway fueron cancelados. Otra impresionante imagen que dejó el corte de luz fue a Times Square con sus famosos carteles luminosos apagados.
Times Square, completamente oscuro (Gentileza @DisasterAlert19).
La interrupción del suministro también afectó al metro de la ciudad con diversos apagones en sus estaciones. "Estamos trabajando para identificar las causas y mantener los trenes en movimiento", informó la Autoridad Metropolitana de Transporte.
Las fallas registradas por la empresa Con Edison.
El suministro retornó poco después de las 22 en la zona de Times Square; y a las 23, cinco de las seis zonas eléctricas habían recuperado la luz. Con Edison, por su parte, estimó que el restablecimiento sería completo para la medianoche. | {
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The short answer is that the United States is a society where an unusual number of people die violently, at least in comparison to other rich, capitalist democracies. That has been true for a long time, and it remains true even though far fewer people now die in the United States as the result of assault than at any time in the past 50 years.
Why this decline has happened is a matter of debate, with potential causes ranging from the demographic (a shift in the age structure of the population) to the organizational (better trauma care for those shot and wounded). As an officially recorded cause of death, “assault” does not pick out the exact mechanism of death, such as a gunshot vs. a stabbing, and so on. It does exclude intentional self-harm and accidents. But there is little doubt that the tendency for assault to be lethal in the United States has a great deal to do with the easy availability of guns.
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The United States is not the most violent country in the world, or even the most violent in the OECD by this measure. Mexico has a much higher assault death rate, one that has spiked in the past decade. Estonia experienced a huge wave of (possibly alcohol-related) homicides shortly after its independence in 1991 but has since receded to near-average levels. But when it comes to questions of living standards, public safety, and social policy, Americans do not typically rush to compare themselves with these countries, nor with more violent non-OECD nations such as Honduras or Kyrgyzstan. The countries in the blue zone in the graph include the likes of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Britain.
Even as overall rates of violent death decline, the horrific, high-visibility mass shooting appears to have become more common in the United States in recent years. It is by now well institutionalized as a mode of violence. When one happens, everybody knows what to do. The past decade has seen innovations in terrorist violence elsewhere in the OECD, too, such as random knife and acid attacks, or driving vehicles into crowds. These are similarly horrifying events and — at least the first few times they are tried — may lead to many fatalities. Do not look for them in the United States, though. Their lethality is intrinsically limited. Using a truck as a weapon is just less efficient than using a weapon as a weapon. For as long as powerful firearms remain easily available to private citizens, the United States is likely to remain well above the OECD average when it comes to violent death. | {
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State Of Play
The upcoming major update (aircraft unlocks!) is in the final stages of internal testing; though it is highly unlikely that it will release this week because we have some things yet to fully test.
Also, we found a game-breaking bug which needs to be researched and fixed.
Plus, the new animations for the new character models were recently completed and targeted to go into this build as well. They too need to be tested now.
In the meantime, the changelog has been updated to reflect this upcoming build.
Make no mistake, many months in the making, this is a MAJOR update.
Also some albums of recent shots (more to come) are up.
16-01-16
16-02-03 | {
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On Monday California Governor Jerry Brown and legislative leaders released a plan to extend through 2030 the state’s cap-and-trade program, which limits carbon emissions and requires polluters to buy allowances for greenhouse gas emissions—that is, permits to pollute. The deal updates how carbon emitters can use pollution allowances and offsets, empowers the California Air Resources Board to set a price cap on permits, and prevents local air districts from placing additional carbon emissions restrictions on polluters already regulated under the cap-and-trade program. A vote on Assembly Bill 398 and AB 617, a companion bill to increase local air pollution monitoring and pollution penalties, could come as early as today; the former will need approval of two-thirds of the Senate and Assembly.
The deal represents a difficult—and some say, imperfect—balancing of environmental and business interests.
The deal’s price cap provision is meant to guard against energy price spikes, but there are concerns it might undermine the purpose of limiting emissions. Thus far, permit prices have hovered near the program’s price floor and emissions have been within the state’s targets, but if demand spikes and prices hit the ceiling, emissions could rise. The proposal includes provisions to ensure that emissions goals are still met when the price ceiling is hit.
The offsets provision would decrease the amount of emissions reductions businesses can achieve through environmental projects in other sectors, and it would require that half of such projects be sited in California. Industry and environmental justice groups have sparred over the offsets, because although they can be a potentially cheaper alternative to achieving emissions reductions at regulated sources they are often without benefit to local air quality.
The two camps also do not see eye to eye on the number of free emissions allowances businesses should receive to keep them from being disadvantaged against out-of-state competitors not subject to the cap-and-trade program. In the deal announced Monday, companies will continue to receive free allowances, though the total number of allowances will shrink as the emissions cap is lowered to meet the state’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
The deal prioritizes state programs that could receive allowance auction proceeds. First in line: efforts to control toxic air pollution from mobile or stationary sources, followed by low-carbon transportation projects and sustainable agriculture programs.
Nine northeastern states are contemplating the future of their own cap-and-trade program. Since inception of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in 2008, the states’ aggregate emissions have decreased 37 percent—spurred in part by the cheap cost of natural gas (subscription). But RGGI advocates say that the program hasn’t sent electric bills soaring; instead, electricity costs have fallen 3.4 percent, again with help from natural gas prices. The program is set to release a plan for reducing the region’s carbon cap later this year, and there are signs that New Jersey may rejoin the program and that Virginia may link up with it—an expansion with both symbolic and market significance.
G20 Meeting Highlights Rift with the United States Over Its Climate Change Stance
Last week’s G20 meeting in Hamburg concluded with leaders of 19 nations renewing their pledge to implement the Paris Agreement and German Chancellor Merkel reiterating those nations’ consensus that “the Paris agreement is irreversible.”
Negotiations over the wording of the final communiqué from Germany hit a snag when the United States insisted on a line that read, “USA will endeavor to work closely with other partners to help their access to and use of fossil fuels.” The final language reads, “The United States of America states it will endeavour to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and help deploy renewable and other clean energy sources, given the importance of energy access and security in their nationally-determined contributions.”
The G20 declaration noted the U.S. withdrawal from the accord but said that the United States affirmed its “strong commitment to an approach that lowers emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs.” The U.S. exit from the accord will become official in November 2020—the year of the next presidential election.
Regarding climate change mitigation, Inside Climate News laid out “six degrees of U.S. isolation” from the other G20 members: the need for increased ambition, the economic benefits of climate action, the coming energy transformation, the need for international finance, the need to end inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and the vestigial role for fossil fuels.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration appointed a renewable energy critic and former spokesman for a Koch Industries-funded campaign promoting fossil fuels to the post of senior adviser in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Study Offers Bad News on Extreme Flooding, Good News on Planning for That Phenomenon
A new study published Tuesday in Nature Communications suggests that extreme flooding currently expected to occur on average once every 100 years could, by 2050, occur every decade or even every year along the world’s vulnerable coastlines. The good news? Use of newly available data and advanced models offers the promise of improving global predictions of extreme sea levels.
“Up to 310 million people residing in low elevation coastal zones are already directly or indirectly vulnerable to ESL”—or extreme sea levels—“and coastal storms are causing damages in the order of tens of billions of dollars per year,” said the researchers. “These numbers could increase dramatically with SLR”—or sea-level rise—“and other changes, leading to annual damages of up to almost 10% of the global gross domestic product in 2100 if no adaptation measures are taken.”
As the climate changes, according to the study, category I hurricanes could do the same amount of damage as category II or III hurricanes did when sea levels were lower. But extreme sea levels, which often arise from a combination of high tides and storm surges, are often underrepresented in high-profile climate change documents such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To quantify the uncertainty of current extreme sea-level estimates, the study used newly released tide gauge data to conduct a meta-analysis of some 20 advanced climate models and found that predicted flood rates were underestimated for the West Coast of North and South America as well as for southern Europe and Australia.
According to researchers, including extreme sea levels in coastal impact studies is vital to helping vulnerable areas to protect themselves.
* * *
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and cross-posted on the Huffington Post and National Geographic NewsWatch. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our YouTube channel for more updates.
To subscribe, send an e-mail to [email protected] with “add to Climate Post mailing” in the subject line. To be removed from this list, please send an e-mail to the [email protected] with “take off mailing list” in the subject line. | {
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It's got everything, from hotels to hospitals to theaters to the world's largest mall, and a severe case of cognitive dissonance.
it's been a while since we used the headline "Dubious Dubai", looking at vaporware real estate projects that were off the scale in terms of size, cost, wretched excess and fossil fuel consumption. But Dubai is back in all its dubious glory, with the Mall of the World, described as "the world's first temperature controlled city."
DesignBoom
DesignBoom tells us that it's got the world's biggest mall connecting to 100 hotels and apartment buildings, with 7 kilometers (4.34 miles) of temperature controlled retail-lined streets, modelled after Barcelona's La Rambla, complete with a streetcar system running down the middle, with a little Oxford Street and Broadway thrown in and a big dose of synthetic Main Street USA. There is also a 3 million square foot "wellness zone" devoted to the latest hot international trend- medical tourism.
Sheik Mohammed notes the problems of doing development in such a hot climate.
This project complements our plans to transform Dubai into a cultural, tourist and economic hub for the two billion people living in the region around us..... Our ambitions are higher than having seasonal tourism. Tourism is key driver of our economy and we aim to make the UAE an attractive destination all year long. This is why we will start working on providing pleasant temperature-controlled environments during the summer months.
And it's sustainable!
While it is great that this is totally car-free, serviced by good old-fashioned streetcars, and a cute new urbanist retro vibe, it takes a lot of energy to air condition a city that size. Not to worry:
The project will follow the green and environmentally friendly guidelines of the Smart Dubai model. It will be built using state-of-the-art technology to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint, ensuring high levels of environmental sustainability and operational efficiency.
180 million tourists every year
The mind boggles, or at least mine does, with a severe case of cognitive dissonance. Here we are, telling people to turn up their thermostats a few degrees and ride a bike, while in Dubai they are planning to fly 180 million tourists every year into an air conditioned city-sized pleasure palace. I don't know why we bother. | {
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Micropia in Amsterdam is het meest vernieuwende museum van Europa, volgens de juryleden van de European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA). Gisteravond werd het museum in het Spaanse San Sebastian daarom bekroond met de Kenneth Hudson Award; de prijs voor het meest innovatieve Europese museum.
De jury zei over Micropia dat het "een uniek, origineel en baanbrekend museum is dat de wereld van microben op een aantrekkelijke en boeiende manier zichtbaar maakt. Micropia tilt het begrip museum naar een hoger niveau."
Micropia, dat pal naast Artis staat, beschrijft zichzelf als het enige museum ter wereld waarbij de onzichtbare wereld van micro-organismes, zichtbaar wordt gemaakt. Virussen, schimmels, bacteriën en ander microscopisch leven zijn te zien in de microdierentuin.
Het European Museum Forum dat onder de Raad van Europa valt, reikt sinds 1977 de prijs uit. Ieder jaar kent het forum speciale juryprijzen toe, waaronder de Kenneth Hudson Award. | {
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"James Cameron's Story of Sci-Fi" airs tonight on AMC at 10 PM Eastern. The third episode of this six-part series focuses on space monsters and how they've been portrayed in science fiction.
(This post was originally published in July 2013 to address how to fight the monsters in Pacific Rim. We find that its suggestions are still valid for the latest installment, Pacific Rim Uprising, and for attacking any other space monsters that might trouble humanity.)
Want to fight a space monster? First, don't go toe-to-toe with them on the ground.
Infantry should be reserved for evacuations, crowd control and to preserve civil order. Once it's been shown that the animal's hide is too thick for bullets and shoulder-fired rockets to have any effect (and this always proves to be the case), withdraw the soldiers and Marines from the front lines.
A tank seems like a fine monster-killing machine. Take the M1A1 Abrams for example. It's pretty fast, with a top speed of 45 mph, so it can get to where the monster is pretty quickly. The tank can be sealed from chemical and biological threats outside, which should always be a priority when an unknown species descends from the sky or emerges from an inter-dimensional rift in the ocean depths.
The tank's 120mm main gun fires high explosive rounds or, even better, kinetic rounds that can punch holes in almost anything. But from the star of Godzilla to the creatures of Pacific Rim, the beasts that will attack will probably shrug off these shells as nothing more than pinpricks. And tanks are tough, but they are not designed to withstand the crushing force of a 300 foot tall dinosaur stomping on them. At the least, the suspension will be wrecked. At the most, the whole vehicle will be crushed and entomb the four crewmembers within.
The Apache can carry 70mm rocket pods and laser-guided Hellfire missiles. A face full of these would make the King of Monsters himself take notice.
The Army could play a role in the fight, but only in the air. AH-64 Apache helicopters would be adept monster hunters, except most of its arms are also light. A 30mm chain gun is ferocious, but if a 50-caliber machine gun on a tank has no effect, there's not much hope that the helo can score any hits.
The advantage, however, is that the helicopter can stay out of range and aim for sensitive spots on the beasts, like the eyes, mouth, gills and so on. Even better, the Apache can carry 70mm rocket pods and laser-guided Hellfire missiles. A face full of these would make the King of Monsters himself take notice.
So here's the tactic—use the Apaches to get the monster's attention, and draw it out of the cities. That would enable the other services to take a crack at killing it. (And let's hope the creature can't unfold unexpected wings and take flight).
Monster Killing Air Power
The most galling thing about monster movies—besides the marginal, comic-relief characters—is the way they botch the way airplanes kill ground targets.
In most movies, directors want to show the airplane shooting at the target (whether it's a kaiju in Pacific Rim or John McClane in A Good Day to Die Hard) in one frame. So they drop the airplane to a suicidal altitude.
In Pacific Rim, F-22 Raptor pilots careen at chest level with the monsters, spraying them with machine gun fire. (I suppose their missiles have been exhausted.) The stealth warplanes, probably the most maneuverable ever devised by engineers, are then knocked out the sky by the creature's claws. Think about it: Why would a pilot ever get within range of a monster's limbs? By taking a dive bomb approach, the warplane gets more time to fire, and from a safer vantage.
Even so, the Raptor is not the best monster killer. Few fighter aircraft would be, since they are armed with heat-seeking and radar guided missiles meant to kill other airplanes beyond the line of sight. Now that we've seen that altitude and the size of the bomb are the most important factors, it's obvious that a bomber is called for.
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In Cloverfield, the survivors of ravaged New York City see the Air Force engage the monster with a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Bad choice. The B-2 is an amazing airplane, but the pilots use GPS-guided munitions. Not the best choice when hunting a monster that can cruise around New York City faster than the President of the United States heading to a midtown fundraiser. The B-2 is only a good warplane if it's delivering the final option—a nuke.
Other bombers offer better options. The B-52 Stratofortress may be the most fitting option. Godzilla, the father of all kaiju, first appeared on screen in 1954. The B-52 was introduced into the Air Force's fleet a year later. More than 60 years and plenty of upgrades later, the airplanes are still flying combat missions. Just this year, B-52s receiving targeting pods that enable ground troops to designate targets with a laser, and the B-52 can drop lots of guided bombs from its 30-foot-long bomb bay.
The problem with the B-52 is that it takes too long to get over a target. So maybe the go-to bomber is the B-1 Lancer, an oft forgotten bomber that can speed to Mach 1.25 when it needs to. When a monster is flattening a city, every second equals tens of millions of dollars in damage. Lancers are not stealthy, so they have been built to be maneuverable enough to dodge antiaircraft missiles—or flying kaiju, if that becomes an issue. B-1s have been using the same targeting pods as the B-52 just received to kill moving targets on the ground.
So here's the plan: Apache helicopters enrage the creature with chain guns and missiles from an acceptable stand-off range. They could also pop up from behind buildings and hills, take their shots, and dip down again. Once the creature is coaxed into an open area, troops on the ground paint it with lasers. The B-1s overhead drop their full load of precision bombs on the thing. Lancers can carry BLU-109 penetrating bombs that can burrow into a bunker before exploding. These could burrow through the hide of a beast and detonate within.
Giant robots may be cool—okay they definitely are—but we can handle monsters just fine when they lumber onto land. If they stay at sea… well, they can stay there as long as they behave. Our submarines would be no match for a native born swimmer with a bad attitude.
"James Cameron's Story of Sci-Fi" airs tonight on AMC at 10 PM Eastern. The third episode of this six-part series focuses on space monsters and how they've been portrayed in science fiction.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io | {
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I wish I had gotten more decent pictures of it, but at least I got some of the bottle this time, heh. I like that there is also little tiny micro glitters in with it as well. :)
I was very intrigued when I seenin Khol's. Heck, I'm always intrigued by flakie glitters especially by uncommon brands. So I got it. I had a coupon as well, combined with the two t-shirts I got, this polish was essentially free. Original price is $8. I'm not sure I would buy any others from that brand at that price, but there was another glitter I may go back and get eventually.It's apretty bar glitter. Application was easy but my nails got tip wear faster just slightly easier, even though Traffic Jam doesn't usually get tip wear/minor chips that easily when worn alone.As I sit here and put labels on my blog post, I suppose it's not so much holographic and more of a flakie. So I worded that a bit wrong but you get the idea. It's more of a blue green bar flakie really. | {
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My money’s on Harris — again. Although, at this stage of Harris’s decline, Gabbard going after her a second time would basically amount to desecration of a corpse.
But Gabbard owes her for that snide, hubristic line after the second debate when Harris scoffed that she was a “top-tier candidate” whereas Gabbard was a one-percenter. Months later, Gabbard is still a one-percenter — but Harris is down below five percent in the RCP average. How does Tulsi suppress the urge to gloat at her collapse, which just so happened to begin after Gabbard’s own attack on Harris’s record as California AG at that same second debate?
No, seriously, though, if anyone’s getting nuked at this next debate, it may be Gabbard herself. Possibly via a first strike by Harris.
“She’s laid down some of the toughest attacks of all of the debates, first against [Rep. Tim] Ryan, later against Harris,” said Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh, an adviser for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, which Gabbard supported. “If I’m on the stage with her in this upcoming debate, I’d certainly want to be prepared to rebut or to deal with Tulsi Gabbard coming at me.”… “As she proved with Kamala, she’s more than willing to say the thing other people are definitely not willing to say,” said Democratic strategist Julia Barnes, the national field director for Sanders’ 2016 campaign. “You just have to balance that with the fact that the other half of the sh– she says is so completely off message for the party and the values that she espouses to represent,” Barnes continued, noting that Gabbard was one of the last House Democrats to support an impeachment inquiry against Trump. “Coming out against impeachment? Come on. Is she really going to stand up onstage and say that? I can only imagine that that is an invitation for 100 percent of the participants just to cut her off at the knees.”… “I would watch for Tulsi to be one of the wild cards that blows up the debate,” a veteran Democratic presidential campaign strategist said. “If I were preparing for this debate with one of the other candidates, especially if I was Elizabeth Warren, I would be very wary of Tulsi Gabbard now being back on the stage.”
“She could even decide to put the whole Democratic presidential field on blast for politicizing the impeachment process,” Politico wonders, which would be a terrible idea for a left-wing candidate who was already waaaaay late in joining the rest of her party in calling for an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s Ukraine conduct. She reluctantly supports that inquiry now after complaining for weeks about how “divisive” impeachment would be, but that probably won’t quell lefty suspicions about her. They view her as too Trump-friendly, having once interviewed with the president about a job during the transition period after the last election and turning up sporadically on Tucker Carlson’s Fox show to commiserate about interventionism. For Gabbard to use her time onstage to scold Democrats about impeachment instead of Trump — even if it’s on “style” grounds related to politicization — would be freakishly tone-deaf in a Democratic primary at a moment when the party’s trying to convince voters that the president should be ousted.
Which is why I think Harris might go after her over it. It’s not just about repaying Gabbard for the attack at the second debate, although it’s partly about that. And it’s not just about demonstrating that Harris is a good debater after Gabbard got the best of her in that earlier exchange, although it’s partly about that too. It’s mainly about Harris trying to rebuild some buzz by hammering Trump on the trail every day, up to and including her weird crusade lately to get him banned from Twitter. If Harris wants to rebrand as the candidate who’ll take it to Trump the most aggressively in the general election, believing that that pitch will appeal to lefties in a visceral way, blasting Gabbard for being some sort of Trump shill is a succinct way to do it. I bet she will.
Meanwhile, there’s an obvious answer to the question of who Gabbard should attack if she’s looking to use what’s left of her campaign to advance her future in the party. That would be Joe Biden, a candidate whom she’s defended in the past from attacks by the likes of Harris. That’s never made sense: Gabbard is a leftist in the Bernie mold, not a centrist like Biden. And Gabbard, the hardcore isolationist, has plenty of policy ammo to use against Biden, starting with his early support for the Iraq war. Damaging Grandpa Joe at the debate would earn back some respect for her from the left who dislike her chumminess with Carlson, and it might make Elizabeth Warren view her as a valuable surrogate potentially, which could earn Gabbard a favor down the road from the likely nominee. There’s every reason for Gabbard to take Warren’s side against Biden at this point. Instead, it’s *Warren* whom she’s been critical of lately on foreign policy, notes Politico, with Gabbard recently saying of her, “I haven’t seen much come from her in the way of what kind of leadership and decision making that she would bring to that most important responsibility that the president has.”
That must be her honest opinion and she must be resolved to stating her honest opinion at all moments because there’s no strategic value to her saying that about the person who’s most likely to face Trump next fall.
Via RCP, here’s Harris recently reiterating her odd interest in Trump’s Twitter account. She has the better of the argument against Tapper here, that Twitter is within its rights to enforce its terms of service and that banning someone for condoning lawbreaking isn’t that slippery a slope, but it’s impossible to see how this pitch is the thing that’ll get her back in the race. Right, it proves that she’s willing to fight Trump on even the smallest battlefield, but all of the Democratic candidates hate Trump. (Except Gabbard, I guess.) Being the person who hates him just a teeny tiny bit more isn’t going to make her the nominee when Warren’s out there rolling out plans for a redistribution revolution. | {
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Donald Trump says the U.S. military is depleted. Those who serve increasingly say they feel deflated.
Some troops said they increasingly feel drained by the rhetoric of the presidential campaign, including last night when Trump suggested that the U.S. military timed a campaign to shape the U.S. election—and that he may not accept the results of the election.
Yet again, an institution desperate to stay out of the campaign as is tasked to salute whoever wins it, found itself at the heart of political storm. And for all the attempts to stay out, the growing frustration oozed out of the hallways as comrades met Thursday morning to discuss what they heard at Wednesday’s debate — and what it means for the values they took an oath to defend.
Officially, the Pentagon will not discuss the election. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, while appearing at a press conference with his South Korean counterpart Thursday, refused to answer even a question about nuclear policy because it was related, in part, to Wednesday’s debate. Anything even remotely cast in politics would not get an answer, Carter said.
Regardless, there was a feeling of malaise in the Pentagon on Thursday morning. Some feared that the rhetoric of the debate could lead to violence after the election.
When asked if he would accept the election’s results, Trump said, “What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense.”
Many here have served in countries where there is no guarantee of a peaceful transition in power. And in Iraq and Afghanistan, their comrades died to bring stability to allow the introduction of democratic practices.Even those who have never deployed to the war zones has studied at military colleges about other countries where nations erupted into violence because the someone rejected the results of an election.
Some troops said they were worried that Trump’s unwillingness to accept the election results could bring the kind of violence to the United States that U.S. troops have deployed overseas to stop.
Still others turned to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice for a means to stop the use of language that could bring similar outcomes to the United States:
“In my mind, this is sedition,” one Air Force major explained. “I wouldn’t be allowed to say it.”
Article 94 of UCMJ defines sedition, in part, as: Someone with the “intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny.”
Trump said that the U.S. military started the campaign to liberate the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from the self-proclaimed Islamic State to help Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton win on November 8.
“The only reason they did it is because she is running for the office of president,” he said. “And they want to look tough. They want to look good.”
The Iraqis timed the start, not the U.S., officials have repeatedly said publicly. Privately, some noted that the U.S. military has a bad track record of predicting outcomes in Mosul. The U.S. was caught off guard when ISIS troops stormed the city June 10, 2014 and met Iraqi forces who fled. And the U.S. military once said the offensive to claim Iraq’s second largest city would begin in the spring of 2015, and when that did not happen, the fall of that year. Neither timeframe was correct.
For a building filled with veterans of the 2003 invasion, the idea that the U.S. could shape Iraqi decision making was laughable.
There are at least 45,000 Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish peshmerga forces participating in the Mosul campaign, compared to a few hundred U.S. troops. The bulk of the U.S. effort has been through airstrikes in and around ISIS assets in Mosul.
“We have never made the Iraqis do anything we want,” one Army colonel complained. “That is why we keep going back there.”
Clinton, in response to Trump’s claim, said: “I'm just am amazed that he seems to think the Iraqi government and our allies and everybody else launched the attack on Mosul to help me in this election, but that’s how Donald thinks, you know, he always is looking for some conspiracy.”
And Trump’s claim challenged a repeated claim by the U.S. military that it was not in the lead of the campaign for Mosul, but rather in support of it. Moreover, such talk took away from the military success on the battlefield; Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi said the campaign for Mosul is ahead of schedule.
Not all troops agree about what was said at the debate as the U.S. military is as varied as the nation it serves. Some said they refused to watch the debate, that they supported Trump or that they did not want to discuss the election.
But it is not the first time the election has set off fury of anxiety within the Pentagon. As early as late last year, there were some commanders suggesting they would quit before serving under President Trump, at that time because he said he would order them to commit war crimes like killing terrorists’ innocent families.
Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has repeatedly urged the military to not speak about political matters. Emails reminding the troops of his order arrive regularly. And for the most part, the military obliges—except in the hours after the presidential debate when, some feel, the very values they took an oath to defend are under attack.
At that point, it feels personal, some said.
“How many days until the election?” one Army colonel asked. “This is dangerous.” | {
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MANILA, Philippines — Allowing China to name some features in Benham or Philippine Rise was clearly a sign of neglect on the part of the Philippine government, an international maritime law expert said.
Government technical agencies were aware that China had submitted name applications for the features in the undersea region off the coast of Aurora province but the government did not protest it, according to Jay Batongbacal, director of the UP Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea.
"The problem here is that we did not make an issue out of it," Batongbacal told ANC's Headstart Monday morning.
Naming the features in the Benham Rise, which is part of the Philippines' extended continental shelf, gives China the recognition that they discovered these features.
This also takes away the prestige and honor from the Philippines as the country actually uncovered these features upon making its claim in the Benham Rise region.
In 2012, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf approved the submission of the Philippines to include Benham Rise as part of its extended continental shelf.
"The NAMRIA, our mapping agency which is part of DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources), has actually been monitoring this ever since," Batongbacal said.
Batongbacal added that the Philippine should be more active in participating in the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), the international organization in charge of naming the world's seas, oceans and navigable waters.
Despite recent uproar following reports of China's naming of Benham Rise features, it might be too late for the Philippines to protest this.
"It’s only now that we’re objecting so my fear, of course, is that we might be taken as out of order, that the organization might say that it’s too late because it is supposedly a scientific process," Batongbacal said.
"This is really a clear sign of neglect even something as simple as naming shows that we are not even keeping up with the simple things, the ones that don’t require that much in terms of resources and expenses," he added.
The Philippine government appears not to be paying enough attention to the country's maritime jurisdictions both in the West Philippine Sea and in the Pacific Ocean, Batongbacal said.
The Philippines may still name the features in Benham Rise, like what the country did in the West Philippine Sea and Philippine Rise, but it will only bind the country.
"Other countries are not bound really to recognize those names that we give to them. As far as the international community is concerned, they go by the names assigned by the relevant international organization which in this case is the IHO," Batongbacal said.
The STAR reported that China's submissions to name undersea features have increased in recent years, rising from 10 in 2013 to 19 in 2014, 21 in 2015, 50 in 2016 and 42 last year.
Documents from the Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names of the IHO showed that China has proposed to name 142 undersea features around the world since 2013. This includes features in the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, including areas where Beijing has overlapping claims with other countries.
Related video: | {
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Confession Bear
i call businesses and ask random questions to improve my social skills
because it's the only way i can practice | {
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Description
The Nike LeBron XI Low boasts the latest in sneaker innovation, including Hyperfuse technology that is lightweight and provides ventilation, Dynamic Flywire for a lockdown fit, a full-length Max Air unit, and a rubber outsole with superior traction. This impressive basketball sneaker also has personal touches, including LeBron's logo on the tongue and signature on the external heel counter. | {
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I was given a beautiful pop-up book of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven and a cute little frame. Thank the for the thoughtful gifts Sue_Ridge_Here | {
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När Evin Ismail intervjuade Samir var han en vanlig kille från en förort nära den hon själv växte upp i. Sedan blev han IS-terrorist. “Min uppgift är att beskriva och mänskliggöra den som vill förgöra mig”, skriver hon i ett porträtt av Samir som dog i Syrien.
Det har gått ett tag sedan jag träffade Samir men inspelningarna där jag intervjuar honom om hans liv finns ännu kvar. En dag nås jag av beskedet om att Samir dog som IS-krigare i Syrien. Jag tar fram diktafonen och lyssnar igenom timmar av samtal med hopp om att få svar på den fråga som inte lämnar mig:
Varför ville en ung svenskfödd kille dö på ett slagfält i Syrien?
Samir föddes och växte upp i en svensk förort inte långt ifrån där jag själv växte upp. Förorten där jag föddes och växte upp sägs vara den förort i Sverige som majoriteten av de svenska IS-krigarna kommer ifrån. Jag är jämnårig med många av dem.
Enligt Säkerhetspolisen är ungefär 300 unga svenska killar i Syrien för att kriga med IS, antalet ökar, man ser inga tecken på att fenomenet på något sätt avtar. Det är även en del av ett europeiskt mönster där man antar att flera tusen unga killar från Europas förorter har valt att ta sig till Syrien för att kriga med IS.
Jag minns Samir som en karismatisk person. Jag intervjuade honom ett flertal gånger. Hans livshistoria berörde mig, den var svår att ta till sig eftersom den kantades av många av de orättvisor som kommer av en uppväxt i en av landets mest segregerade och fattiga förorter.
Jag träffade Samir i egenskap av doktorand vid Uppsala universitet och intervjuerna skulle också vara med i en bok om livet i förorten. Jag lämnade min förort några dagar efter att jag tagit studenten och lovade mig själv att starta om, att vägra vara platsbunden, fast i problemen, fast i andras blickar på en. Jag lovade mig själv att inte berätta för någon om var jag kom ifrån. Jag skulle bort, långt bort, och för att nå dit krävdes det av mig att jag lämnade det förflutna. Jag flyttade till Stockholm, bar vackra pärlhalsband och blå skjortor och kände mig fri, tills jag träffade Samir.
Samirs liv påminde om det liv som vissa av de killar som jag växte upp med hade haft, de som det inte gick så bra för. De som sågs som utklassade innan de hade fått en chans till att bli erkända. De som tog ut sin frustration på destruktiva sätt och de som dog alldeles för unga. Dödsfall som sågs som olyckor, överdoseringar och gängbråk men som för mig alltmer började likna dödsfall relaterade till ett ojämlikt samhälle. Han påminde mig om mitt förflutna, och hans historia klibbade sig fast i mig.
Samir aktualiserade en stor rädsla inom mig, rädslan som gjorde att jag bröt med det förflutna. Rädslan över att hamna utanför. Samir personifierade utanförskapet, och jag var tvungen att intervjua honom. Jag kunde inte vända ryggen till längre, och han såg rakt igenom mig. Han visste att jag sett mycket av det som han sett, och han såg att jag nu var på en annan plats. En plats som för honom, och många andra, är ouppnåelig. Obalansen i vår relation var väldigt påtaglig, att vi delade ett förflutet, att vi båda kom från liknande områden, var också påtagligt.
I honom mötte jag mitt förflutna, och det var ingen vacker syn. I mig såg han en omöjlighet som heller inte var en vacker syn. Obalansen var klassrelaterad, han visade mig att man inte kan lämna sitt förflutna, och jag visade honom att klassresan endast är förbehållen vissa. Det var ingen vacker syn eller upplevelse, och den blev bara värre.
I intervjun började Samir med att berätta om hur det var att börja i skolan. Under sina första skolår blev Samir satt i en förberedelseklass för nyanlända invandrare. Detta trots att hans svenska var god. Samir berättade om hur det kändes:
”Det var förnedrande, jag hade en hög nivå. De såg inte min potential, min nivå. De såg inte vem jag var. Jag var född i Sverige och satt där med barn som inte kunde ett enda ord svenska. Mina föräldrar är analfabeter men min pappa vet hur rasistiskt Sverige är för att han har bott här länge så han sa bara stå ut i ett år så får du gå i vanlig klass sedan. Han vet att det svenska samhället är dömande i början och sedan när man visar att man är kunnig, att man är tillräckligt bra, så brukar det oftast leda till korrigering. Men så blev det i alla fall inte utan efter ett år fick jag gå i vanlig klass men även där fick jag gå svenska B, jag fick aldrig tillhöra svenska A-gruppen”.
När jag frågade Samir vad han trodde att det berodde på att han blev satt i en förberedelseklass för nyanlända invandrare, trots att han var född i Sverige, svarade han:
”Jag vet inte riktigt men jag tror att de missförstod mig som person och mina kunskaper, min potential. De missförstod helt min potential. Att jag hade en potential till att utvecklas på ett positivt sätt. Under hela min grundskolegång så var bemötandet av mig totalt förnedrande. Det var rasistiskt till max. Det var motstånd hela vägen. Det hände även andra, mönstret var att muslimerna i klassen fick stå ut med förnedring, att de sågs som lågt utvecklade.”
Samir fortsatte att berätta om sin skolgång och om en lärare som kallade honom för jävla apa. Han menade att många av hans lärare var rasister. Han avskydde sina lärare och litade inte på dem. Han utövade även motstånd genom att kasta stolar och böcker på sina lärare. ”De förnedrade mig och jag tog ingen skit” sade Samir. Han fortsatte:
”Lärarna hämmade oss och sa alltid ’ni kommer inte bli nånting, ni kommer inte bli nånting, ni kommer inte bli nånting’. De förnedrade oss och vi gav dem ingen respekt alls. De behandlade mig som skit. Lärarna sa att jag fuskade när jag fick bra resultat på prov. Det gjorde att jag sket i skolan, varför ska jag bry mig när ingen lyssnar? Jag tappade hoppet och tänkte att jag ska lämna Sverige.”
Till slut hoppade Samir av skolan och flyttade till ett annat land. Han beskriver flytten dit som:
”När jag var där så frågade de mig ’vad kan du?’ Jag sa jag kan datorer, jag kan webbdesign. De sa okej, de frågade mig inte om nån utbildning alls. Jag fick ett jobb och levde bra, jag fixade körkort och jag mådde bra där, direkt. Jag har aldrig mått så bra i hela mitt liv, jag är uppväxt i det här jävla landet Sverige och har aldrig fått en sån bekräftelse som i det nya landet efter endast två veckor.”
Samir ville bort från Sverige och han såg sin framtid som positiv i det nya landet. Där kom han även i kontakt med religiöst extrema grupperingar. Med tiden flyttade han tillbaka till Sverige, men han ångrade aldrig att han hoppade av skolan eftersom han ansåg att han inte fick den rätta kunskapen där. När jag frågade honom vad han har för sysselsättning så svarade han att han var ”vanlig arbetskraft”, han hade perioder av arbetslöshet och perioder av jobb som bestod av klassiska arbetaryrken.
Ett minne: Jag väntar på Samir, han är sen. Jag iakttar honom från ett fönster och ser att han talar med en lättklädd hemlös man. Samir räcker fram sin enda jacka men mannen vill inte ha den. När vi väl möttes frågade jag vad han hade gjort och han svarade att han hade pratat med en hemlös man och frågat om han behövde något, om han behövde hans jacka.
Han fortsatte sin berättelse med att tala om att han avskyr att bli sedd som ett problem, att han under hela sitt liv har fått höra att han är ett problem och att allt som han gör är fel.
Om att växa upp i sin förort sade Samir:
”Jag tyckte om att växa upp där, med grabbarna var det nice. Men runt omkring var det inte bra, om jag sökte till en skola och de fick reda på att jag var från den här förorten så fanns det plötsligt ingen plats. Eller när jag sökte jobb, så jag började ljuga, jag skrev att jag bodde i en rik stadsdel. Folk runt omkring en var rädda, de brukade säga ’ska du råna mig nu, ska du slå mig nu. Starta inte bråk snälla, var inte så aggressiv, lugna ner dig, lugna ner dig’, sånt där hatar jag nu. När någon säger till mig ’lugna ner dig, lugna ner dig’. De har fördomar och blir rädda.”
Samir hade en särskilt jobbig relation till polisen. Jag såg en gång en inspelad video på Samir när han blir gripen av polisen. Jag såg att han kände sig förnedrad och utövade motstånd. Mot kvällen blev han släppt.
Samir hade en väldigt stark aversion mot myndigheter och menade att de alla behandlade honom illa. Man kan tänka sig att vissa erfarenheter av felbehandling från myndigheters håll är en sida av detta, sedan kan man tänka sig att alla erfarenheter av myndighetskontakt inte var negativa. Men det är mestadels de negativa som Samir minns.
Samirs bil blev exempelvis ofta stoppad av polisen. När jag bad honom att redogöra för de gånger som polisen stoppat honom svarade han:
”Det har hänt så många gånger att jag inte minns hur många. Under min uppväxt så brukade de fråga ’vad gör du här, var bor du nånstans, vad heter du, vad heter din mamma, vad heter din pappa’, det var många såna frågor. Min inställning till polisen har alltid varit negativ, bara man ser dem känner man oro och stress, de går runt med vapen, det stressar en. De går runt med en mundering som om de vore soldater, högmodiga som om de ägde världen, man blir ju rädd.”
När Samir lade ut en bild på sig själv på Facebook från när han var i Syrien, poserar han med ett stort vapen. Högmodig, som om han vore en soldat som ägde världen. Bilden skrämmer mig. Jag tänker att han har iscensatt bilden av en terrorist, att han nu har införlivat den stereotypen i sig själv som en självuppfyllande profetia. Han har nu iklätt sig rollen som förtryckare, i stället för att vara förtryckt.
Jag undrar om han dödar oskyldiga där, deltar han i de grymheter som det rapporteras om på nyheterna? Samir har postat en video på sin Facebook, det är en propagandavideo mot en folkgrupp som jag tillhör. Varför började han hata människor som tillhör den grupp som han själv växte upp med i Sverige?
Samir fortsätter:
”Jag litar inte på polisen. Jag har en dålig erfarenhet av polisen, de skrämmer mig varje gång. De stoppade mig en gång mitt på torget där jag växte upp, de stoppar och säger att jag är misstänkt för mordförsök. Vad fan pratar ni om sa jag och så ser jag en helikopter som kommer och går och en massa poliser, och folk som tittar. Polisen trakasserade mig med sina frågor. Efter en timme kom en polis som sa ’låt honom gå’, de sa inte ens ursäkta, de sa bara ’tack för ditt samarbete’. Jag började bli mer och mer förbannad.”
Han fortsätter med att berätta om sina erfarenheter med polisen:
”De vill markera en känsla i oss, att vi från förorten är dåligt folk, man ska få den känslan i sig. Det är en systematisk trakassering. Det är en systematisk trakassering för att ungdomarna i orten inte ska känna sig välkomna, inte känna sig fria, så att detta får en negativ effekt på dem i skolan, arbetslivet och det politiska systemet. För att vi inte ska utvecklas. Om folket i förorten hade utvecklats, då hade vi haft en annan politik i dag.”
“De kriminaliserar människor. Att få människor att känna sig kriminella genom att stoppa dem för ingenting. De tar in oss i bilar och kör iväg oss, och släpper av oss någon annanstans. De vill säga till andra att vi lever i ett farligt samhälle och att de här ungdomarna är farliga. Sådant leder till kriminalitet. Till slut tänker man: Vad fan ska jag göra, efter att jag har kämpat i det här samhället och blir anklagad för att vara kriminell, vad fan ska jag göra, jag kan lika gärna fucka till det då. Man fuckar till det som en hämnd.”
“Efter polisens trakasserier så tänker jag, vad fan gör jag i det här landet? Jag vill dra härifrån igen. De begränsar mig. När polisen kör förbi och ser mig så ser de en blatte och de kollar extra noga. Man känner sig extra övervakad och blir nervös. Man tänker fan vad är det här, kan man inte få leva fritt? De säger att vi lever fritt, jag ser ingen demokrati i det här landet. När jag kör bil blir jag stoppad nästan varje gång polisen ser mig. Varannan dag ungefär. Jag funderar ofta på att lämna landet. Jag vet att jag inte kan leva länge till i det här landet.”
Livet tedde sig som en ständig kamp för Samir, en kamp om att inte bli sedd utifrån andras föreställningar och om att till slut underkasta sig dem. Hans liv påminner om livet som anonym fiende. Kanske trivdes han i Syrien för att det var den enda rollen som han kände sig bekväm i, rollen som han hade blivit tilldelad sedan sina första levnadsår. Samir började i skolan med en stark känsla av att inte bli sedd och han dog slutligen på ett slagfält som en helt anonym fiende.
Ett minne: Det sista som jag sa till Samir var att han har ett kvinnoförakt och han svarade, ”ja så kanske det är”.
Jag undrar om det var i Syrien med IS och andra svenskar som han fann sin första gemenskap. Var det där han fick en acceptans, var de alla enade i sitt utanförskap? Kanske var det i Syrien som Samir för första gången i sitt liv blev accepterad och kände en samhörighet och gemenskap, allt det som han hade svårt att finna i Sverige. Kanske blev han liksom en del andra, besviken på sin nya gemenskap. I sociala medier kallar sig de svenska IS-krigarna för Ghuraba.
Ghuraba är det arabiska ordet för främlingskap.
Under hela inspelningen av intervjun skriker måsarna högt, och vattnet skvalpar, vi sitter vid hamnen och solen skiner. Det är en dag full av liv som min diktafon har förevigat. Medan jag skriver detta annonserar vintern sin ankomst. Och Samir har dött.
Ett minne från när jag fick reda på det: En vän ringer och säger att Samir har åkt till Syrien för att kriga. Jag börjar kolla igenom sociala medier, jag hittar Ghuraba-gruppen som dagligen postar bilder. Det är många bilder på krigarnas lik, och deras död formuleras i positiva termer. Nu är de i himlen, sörj inte. Jag går in någon gång i veckan för att se om Samir har avlidit. Jag fick aldrig se en bild på honom. Det var nog bäst så.
Jag vaknade en morgon och kunde inte sluta tänka på det bisarra i att han tillbringar sin tid på ett slagfält i Syrien. Jag går upp ur sängen och sätter mig vid köksbordet. Jag ringer upp vännen som kände honom, det är tidigt och han svarar inte. Jag har en känsla av att Samir kanske är död. Vännen ringer upp senare mot kvällen och frågar varför jag ringde så tidigt. Jag säger att jag har en känsla, jag kan inte släppa den, har du hört något från Samir? Vännen berättar att han fått ett samtal tidigt den morgonen, ett samtal om att Samir dött, just den morgonen.
Jag klarar av att lyssna på Samirs röst några minuter i taget, innan jag lägger ifrån mig diktafonen, ibland med flera veckors mellanrum. Berättelsen kräver sin tid och jag måste tänka klart, det är svårt att tänka när känslorna tar över, de gör det eftersom medierna dagligen rapporterar om IS grymheter i Syrien, Irak och Kurdistan.
Våldtäkter, halshuggningar, människohandel och massavrättningar. Konflikten är inristad i min kropp, och hans röst, hans existens hotar min. Det är svårt att lyssna till rösten, konflikten kommer alldeles för nära inpå min existens. Jag kvävs av hans röst.
En vän säger till mig att jag med denna text försöker beskriva vår tids Hitler. Det är ingen lätt uppgift konstaterade vi båda.
Jag lyssnar på radion, det är en intervju med en svensk kille som har valt att kriga på den kurdiska sidan, den sida som försvarar sig mot IS angrepp. Journalisten frågar ”har du dödat någon” och han svarar ja. Journalisten frågar med stort allvar och med en viss upprördhet i rösten: ”hur känns det att ta en annan människas liv?” Han svarar ”jag känner inget, för mig är de inte människor”.
Rapporteringarna om IS brutalitet är många. Deras största offer och huvudsakliga måltavlor är kvinnor, kurder, yezidier, kristna och shiamuslimer. Jag är kvinna och min bakgrund är både shia-muslimsk och kurdisk. Jag har en förälder som är arab med shia-muslimsk bakgrund och en förälder som är kurd med sunni-muslimsk bakgrund, ingen av dem är religiös och båda är sekulära och de kommer ursprungligen ifrån Irak.
Det är många som har velat sätta in mig i ett fack. Mina föräldrar trotsade det tänkandet när de gifte sig, med olika klassbakgrunder, den ena från en överklassfamilj och den andra från en fattig familj i 80-talets Bagdad där skillnaderna betonades, där en assimileringspolitik med syfte att ”arabisera” kurder och mord och fördrivning fördes av landets diktator. Ett land som har drabbats av sekteristiskt våld mellan sunni- och shia-muslimer.
Jag har aldrig haft möjligheten att utöva den religion som jag ibland förväntas utöva, sunni- och shia-muslimer ber på olika sätt och det förhindrar mig att göra det som anses vara det viktigaste. Ibland tänker jag att det kanske är meningen att det ska vara så.
Trots denna känsliga bakgrund förväntas jag besvara frågan om min religionstillhörighet på ett enkelt sätt. Ibland ställs den för att ta ifrån mig rätten att vara en egen individ, jag ska reduceras till denna kategori, genom detta är syftet att få mig att framstå som en partisk forskare. Det är som om bilden av islam och muslimer består av ett ja eller nej. Att vara muslim, vad har det kommit att betyda? Jag vet så mycket som att både högerextrema och IS just nu för en kamp om denna definitionsrätt. Deras kamper är mycket snarlika.
Hur passar jag in i IS och andra extremisters syn på fasta religiösa och etniska identiteter? Gör det mig till en oförståelig fiende, eftersom jag förkroppsligar deras lögn om den rena religionstillhörigheten, etniciteten och rastillhörigheten?
Min uppgift är att beskriva och mänskliggöra den som vill förgöra mig. Om mina föräldrar inte hade flytt från Saddam Husseins Irak, hade jag kanske varit ett av hans offer.
”Han är en jävla mördare” säger en vän argt till mig när jag berättar att jag skriver den här texten om Samir, hon vill inte att jag ska skriva den.
Jag måste fortsätta att skriva texten för i mina ögon blev han en mördare, han var inte det när vi hade våra samtal, och nu försöker jag förstå. Jag försöker samtidigt få henne att förstå att jag inte rättfärdigar eller accepterar hans handlingar för att jag vill förstå.
Jag försöker förstå det många avfärdar som ”ondska”, det man enkelt förpassar till kategorin ”omänskligt”. Är det inte människor som utför dessa handlingar? Var en av dem inte killen som jag satt och spelade in på min diktafon i syfte att förstå det samhälle vi alla är en del i? Jag avfärdar med enkelhet hans handlingar, med ord, med hela mitt känsloregister som stundtals har förlamat mig, min kropp och mina tankar, men min önskan att förstå kvarstår. Trots allt.
Ett minne: Samir sitter vid fönstret, med halva sin kropp utåt, han balanserar mellan att vara inne och ute. Jag säger åt honom att komma in, att han annars kan falla. Han svarar att det ändå inte spelar någon roll. Han säger att det inte spelar någon roll om han är levande eller död.
Michel Foucault menar att rasismen har rollen att etablera en positiv relation av typen ”ju mer du dödar, ju mer du ser till att folk dör eller ju fler du låter dö, desto mer lever du”. Döda kan här både tolkas symboliskt och bokstavligt, resonemanget kan både appliceras på det man kallar mikro- och makronivå, det vill säga som större struktur och i det mellanmänskliga.
Samirs val att åka till Syrien handlade väldigt mycket om döden, både den symboliska och den faktiska döden. Marginaliseringen som han fick uppleva är en symbolisk död, man kan säga att han har upplevt rasismens andra funktion, att symboliskt ”bli dödad” genom att inte få en plats i samhället. Sedan anammade han samma rasistiska logik när han åkte till Syrien, han dödar andra för att få liv, för att slutligen ta sitt eget liv, eller låta sig dö. Han skriver med det om sin livsberättelse.
För ett liv som inte anses värt att leva är döden som utgång ett tänkbart alternativ, men helst en ”heroisk”, ”ärofylld” död: ”martyrdöden”, och det är här IS ideologi kommer in i bilden. Jag tolkar det som att IS utnyttjar vissa av dessa unga mäns utsatthet för att få igenom sin egen ideologi, och utlovar dem i gengäld ”martyrdöden”. Ser vi också unga män som står utanför som redan döda, symboliskt döda, är det därför vi kan avfärda deras livsöden så lätt?
Ett minne: Jag ringer en vän och berättar om Samir, jag säger att jag är rädd för att han inte kommer att leva länge till. Han påminner så mycket om dem som har gått bort. Han är inte ditt ansvar, svarar hon. Vems ansvar är en människa som har gett upp, tänker jag. Vem bör ta ansvar för en människa som har nått botten och som inte ser en utväg?
Jag tolkar till stor del Samirs val att åka till Syrien som en form av självmord delvis grundat i att han blev betraktad som ett oönskat liv i Sverige. Valet kan även uppfattas som en självuppfyllande profetia delvis skapad av diskursen om muslimer som terrorister. Med självuppfyllande profetia avses: en ursprungligen falsk förutsägelse som genom att uttalas blir sann.
Hela IS ideologi bygger på idén om den muslimske terroristen, på idén om kriget mellan ”islam” och väst”. De är väl medvetna om vad som försiggår i dessa unga mäns självbild och verklighet, och de utnyttjar den för att få igenom fruktansvärda handlingar och för att öka motsättningarna i världen.
Samirs upplevda brist på gemenskap och meningsfull tillvaro utnyttjades. Hans alienering från samhället utnyttjades och jag minns inte Samir som en särskilt religiös person.
Däremot så minns jag honom som en sökande person, han sökte kunskap som tyvärr ofta bara sträckte sig till konspirationsvideor på Youtube. Kanske blev han övertygad när han fann IS propaganda på nätet? Kanske blev han självradikaliserad och övertygad IS-anhängare på nätet? Kanske hade en samhällsinsats lett honom till annan kunskap? Jag minns att han sade att han ville studera, jag minns att han frågade mig om hur man gör för att komma in på universitetet. Jag ställde upp med hjälp, men ändå, han var helt utanför och drev runt. Kunde han själv se sitt ansvar?
IS-krigare erbjuds att skenbart ta makten över sin livssituation och försöker på så sätt skriva berättelsen om sig själva, den om en ”hjältekrigare” som dog i strid för en god sak. För vem vill leva och dö som ett problem, som ett oönskat liv? Det var det alternativet som Samir såg att samhället erbjöd honom. IS erbjöd ”hjältedöden”.
Jag vill även hävda att en ny marginaliserad maskulinitet har skapats. Denna måste vägas in som en bidragande förklaring till fenomenet europeiska IS-krigare. Den marginaliserade maskuliniteten har skapats i en kombination av den ekonomiska krisen, segregation, prekariatet, rasism och bilden av den muslimske terroristen. Extremister framstår som effektiva på att samla, övertyga och ge riktning och mening åt denna grupp.
Det är ofta män som står utanför välfärdsstatens skydd, utan jobb, utan bostad, med skulder och en livslång frustration över att inte känna sig hemma i Sverige, som är de som har minst att förlora på att ge upp det de har och ansluta sig till något nytt. För att ta tillbaka makten över sina liv erbjuds den marginaliserade maskuliniteten en krigaridentitet och möjligheten att anamma rasismens logik ”ju mer du dödar, desto mer lever du”. I det här fallet får man liv genom att döda, slutligen får man liv genom att själv dö ”martyrdöden”.
Ett minne: under bilden, den där han håller i vapnet, finns en kommentar, det står: vilken man du är.
En fråga som ofta infinner sig när man talar om samhällets påverkan på individen är den om personligt ansvar. Att försöka förstå handlingar i en social kontext är enligt mig inte liktydigt med att frånta människor deras personliga ansvar, det är att bredda analysen. Att enbart hänvisa till människors personliga ansvar och fria vilja vad gäller allvarliga fenomen som terrorism är näst intill att anta en antiintellektuell hållning.
För vad säger detta oss? Att alla ansvarar för sina handlingar är för mig en grundläggande självklarhet som inte ger oss svar på hur sociala problem motverkas. Synsättet är moraliskt färgat, det ger människan agens, det mänskliggör, vilket är viktigt då människan självfallet inte är socialt determinerad till att begå vissa handlingar – men jag anser att det inte finns en direkt motsättning mellan det personliga ansvaret och att se till sociala strukturer, familjeförhållanden och liknande.
Att syna sociala förhållanden är inte detsamma som att frånta människor deras personliga ansvar och agens. Jag tror att människor ibland kan behöva sociala incitament och en meningsfull social kontext för att kunna se sitt personliga ansvar. Detta gäller särskilt de som står utanför samhället.
Att betona det personliga ansvaret leder inte nödvändigtvis till att individer sedan väljer rätt, eller agerar ansvarsfullt. Det tror jag inte på som grundantagande. Människor handlar fel, är ansvarslösa och begår brutala övergrepp – det är detta som vi måste förstå och motarbeta bortom det självklara moraliska fördömandet av handlingarna.
Svenska IS-krigare är en av vår tids största utmaningar ur säkerhetssynpunkt. Med Samirs livshistoria och aversion mot myndigheter och samhället i beaktande, så är det inte osannolikt att han skulle kunna ha riktat sin frustration mot det svenska samhället om han hade återvänt från Syrien. Han hade inget av betydelse att komma tillbaka till. Hade han kommit tillbaka från kriget i Syrien så hade han utöver ett straff senare behövt en sysselsättning och meningsfull tillvaro.
Även om svenskar tidigare har deltagit i krig utan att utföra terrordåd på hemmaplan efteråt så är svenska IS-krigare i vissa fall en särskild grupp, i och med den sociala marginaliseringen som vissa av dem får uppleva, och som Samirs livshistoria vittnar om.
Det verkar vara svårt att få i gång en nyanserad diskussion om ämnet i Sverige, och medan många som skulle kunna göra nytta inte gör något, kommer rasister att inta diskussionen om radikalisering och komma med sina lösningar den dag frågan blir storpolitik på en nivå som vi ännu inte kan föreställa oss. Många är för låsta i de egna föreställningarna och dogmerna för att tänka pragmatiskt kring frågan.
Detta samtidigt som fler liv skördas i Irak och Syrien. Det är nästan så jag tror att det är först om ett fruktansvärt dåd äger rum i Sverige som det yrvaket kommer att börja talas. Risken är då att ett rasistiskt parti redan kommer att äga problemformuleringen, och genom det ha möjligheten att på allvar börja peka ut landets muslimer, särskilja dem från andra svenskar och inskränka deras rättigheter. Vi behöver inte låta det gå så långt.
Berättelsen som Samir lämnade efter sig är den om att återta makten över sitt liv. Hans död var en symbolisk handling med ett budskap till samhället. Budskapet lyder: Fuck you, det här är min hämnd.
Det går även att förstå i den aktivitet på sociala medier där dessa personer framställer sig som ädla krigare, och i vissa fall får en hjältestatus.
Dessa ljudupptagningar tog mig ett halvår att ta mig igenom. Jag försöker förstå, men inser att detta är mycket större än Samir. Hans berättelse kan ge oss nycklar till att med större fördjupning förstå den struktur vi verkar i och upprätthåller. Det akuta läget och IS grymheter gör det bara väldigt svårt. Kanske tror vi att vi ännu inte har nycklarna att hantera denna berättelse som ett av vår tids tydligaste manifesteranden av ojämlikhetens och avhumaniseringens konsekvens. Kanske är vi ännu inte beredda att se de värsta konsekvenserna av att vi har tillåtit ett så ojämlikt och segregerat samhälle växa fram.
Evin Ismail
Fotnot:
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Bondsman looking for absconded felon, says he'll turn up: “Put a little money on the street and people will turn in their own grandmother.”
Antonio Jamal Gearing must be good at reading a jury.
That’s because Gearing, who was charged with robbery with a firearm, didn’t stick around the courthouse on Tuesday for the 90 minutes it took the jury in his trial to return its verdict.
The verdict: guilty.
By then Gearing, who was able to walk out of the courthouse because he was free on $75,000 bail, was nowhere near the courtroom at the S. James Foxman Justice Center in Daytona Beach. He had walked out at the beginning of deliberations, according to a press release from the 7th Circuit State Attorney’s Office.
Gearing, 29, of Daytona Beach, was on trial accused of robbing a Dollar General at gunpoint on May 21, 2018. He got away with $687.
His attorney, Assistant Public Defender Rachel Brothers, who was admitted to the bar in 2013, said she had never before had to deal with a client vanishing like Gearing.
"First time I've ever seen it," she said.
If and when Gearing is captured, he will face between 10 years and up to life in prison without parole for the robbery. His prior criminal record includes a charge of fleeing attempting to elude and driving without a license in 2012 and attempted robbery in 2008.
Police are now looking for Gearing and so is J Gailbreath, who described himself as the owner or vice president at Express Bail Bonds Volusia County in Daytona Beach.
“I’m the one that’s going to pay the $75,000 if we don’t find him,” Gailbreath said in a phone interview.
Gearing’s timing was unusual, Gailbreath said, beyond the fact that he fled. He said it’s been his experience that if a defendant is going to skip bail, they usually do so before the case goes to trial. They don’t wait until the case goes to the jury.
“I’ve never seen it, actually,” Gailbreath said. “They usually go before then. It’s pretty bold to walk right out of the courthouse with deputies there.”
Gailbreath said once he gets a notice from the court he will have 60 days to find Gearing before he has to pay the bail.
But he said in a case like Gearing’s where the bail is high, family members sign papers making themselves responsible for the money. That means that Gailbreath could take them to court to get his money back.
Regardless, he said that you can usually find people, unless they hopped a plane to a country without an extradition treaty with the United States.
“At the end of the day, money talks,” Gailbreath said. “Put a little money on the street and people will turn in their own grandmother.”
DON'T MISS AN EPISODE, SUBSCRIBE: iTunes | Google Play | {
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ROME (Reuters) - Two Italian civilians held hostage in Libya were probably killed this week in fighting in the western Libyan city of Sabratha, the Italian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
Libyan security forces said they attacked Islamic State militants in Sabratha on Wednesday, and later released photographs of two Western men found dead after their raid.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry said the men might be two of the four employees of the Italian construction company Bonatti who were kidnapped last July near a compound owned by the oil and gas group Eni.
It named the possible victims as Fausto Piano and Salvatore Failla but said formal verification was difficult because it did not have access to the bodies.
A spokesman for security forces in Sabratha said the two were probably shot before Wednesday’s clashes. “According to our investigations the two Italians who were kidnapped in Libya last year were executed by Islamic State militants before the confrontation took place,” Sabri Kshada said.
Local Libyan brigades have been fighting in Sabratha since last week, when militants briefly overran the city center and beheaded more than 10 brigade members.
That followed a U.S. air strike on the outskirts of Sabratha on Feb. 19 in which more than 40 people were killed. The Serbian government said two Serbian nationals who had been held hostage since November were among the dead.
Sabratha is one of several Libyan cities where militants loyal to Islamic State have established a presence, taking advantage of the political chaos that has plagued the North African country since Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011.
Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper said on Thursday that Italy had sent some 40 secret service agents to Libya “some weeks ago”, and that an additional 50 special forces operatives were set to join them. A security source confirmed the story.
Italy, the former colonial power in Libya, has said it is ready to send a much larger contingent there to help train local forces as soon as a U.N.-backed unity government is formed.
Officials in Rome who did not want to be identified said these troops would not be involved in front-line action. Any direct military action would only be ordered to defend Italian interests, such as Eni installations, they said. | {
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Un collectif d’usagers des trains du sud de la Normandie demande à rencontrer d’urgence les représentants de la région. Ils dénoncent « l’absurdité » des nouveaux horaires de la SNCF.
« Le matin le train arrivera à 7h55 (au lieu de 7h03 au service actuel) et [celui d’après] à 9h05 (au lieu de 8h37). Pour le premier train, les usagers devront se retourner vers la voiture ou rechercher un autre lieu de travail ; concernant le second horaire, ils seront contraints de prendre le train précédent et de partir plus tôt avec toutes les conséquences qui se répercutent sur la vie professionnelle et familiale. Concernant les scolaires, les familles seront obligées de se tourner vers l’internat ou bien les élèves devront de se lever plus tôt pour attendre près d’une heure avant le début des cours. »
TER Normandie en gare • © JY.Gelebart
30 allers-retours de moins et plus de bus
« On dénonce ces horaires depuis plusieurs mois mais rien n’a bougé. La région et la SNCF veulent faire des économies à tout prix et finalement on arrive à ce genre de situations »
Les usagers des trains de la ligneet de lane décolèrent pas. Dans un courrier adressé à Jean-Baptiste Gastinne, le président de la commission transport à la région,qui entreront en vigueur le 20 décembre prochain.Des changements qui semblent en effet ubuesques et qui risquent d’. Exemple avec celui à destination d’Alençon :qui voudront prendre le train au départ de Caen vers le Mans, ce ne sera plus possible après 18h52. Le train suivant ayant été supprimé, ils devront finir leur journée plus tôt…« Les choix qui ont été faits n’améliorent pas le quotidien des Normands », s’insurge, secrétaire du Collectif citoyen de défense des axes ferroviaires sud Normandie. « Faire arriver un train à 9h05 à Alençon, dans une commune où il y a de l’emploi et des scolaires est une aberration ! On voudrait vider la ligne et les trains que l’on ne s’y prendrait pas autrement ! »Avec ces nouveaux horaires, selon le collectif,. C’est. En parallèle, 10 allers-retours en car vont être créés. , le président du collectif, martèle : « En plein débat sur le réchauffement climatique, c’est un scandale ! On supprime des trains et on ajoute 1500 km de trajets en cars, des cars qui vont forcément faire une partie du trajet à vide »Il y a urgence, selon le collectif, car ces horaires seront validés le. Le collectif citoyen de défense des axes ferroviaires sud Normandie avait déjà rencontré la région le 1er juillet dernier et avait émis des propositions…qui sont restés lettre morte.
Les nouveaux horaires sur la ligne Caen-Tours
© PHOTOPQR/LA MONTAGNE/MAXPPP
Inquiétude à la gare d’Argentan
« Le train du matin au départ d’Argentan vers Caen est remplacé par deux bus dont l’un mettra 50 minutes au départ de St Pierre en Auge au lieu de 18 minutes par le train pour se rendre à Caen, ce qui ne sera pas sans conséquence sur la fréquentation de l’axe. Sollicités par de nombreux élus et des parents d’élèves, les uns comme les autres nous ont fait part de leurs préoccupations et souhaitent que des réponses soient trouvées dans l’intérêt de tous »
Mécontentements sur la ligne Paris-Granville
Parmi les gares les plus impactées, il y a celle d’Argentan. Par semaine, ce sontUn guichet doit déjà fermer le 1er octobre prochain et une menace pèse sur le second.Là encore, des cars doivent remplacer les trains :Philippe Denolle a déja alerté les élus : « Il faut assurer ces dessertes pour désenclaver ces territoires »
Pour les usagers de la ligne Paris-Granville, le constat est aussi amer, selon le courrier.
« Le nouvel horaire de départ du train à 16h13 ne satisfait personne, même avec un départ de Montparnasse 1. Il ne permet pas à ceux qui se rendent à Paris pour des impératifs divers : réunion, rendez-vous médical, formation … de le prendre. Ils devront donc attendre le dernier train pour rentrer c’est-à-dire 19h.43. »
Le collectif espère obtenir un rendez-vous à la région Normandie avant le 14 octobre. | {
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It wasn’t difficult to keep my list of the best comedy movies of 2015 to 10 as there just weren’t that many funny movies in theaters this year. Three sequels, one remake, a coming of age film, a vampire mockumentary, and a spoof on spy films earned spots on this year-end list.
2015’s Funniest Films in Alphabetical Order:
The Duff starring Mae Whitman, Skyler Samuels, Biana Santos, Robbie Amell, Ken Jeong, Romany Malco, and Alison Janney
The Plot: Bianca (Mae Whitman) is a content high school senior whose world is shattered when she learns the student body knows her as ‘The DUFF’ (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) to her prettier, more popular friends (Skyler Samuels & Bianca Santos). Now, despite the words of caution from her favorite teacher (Ken Jeong), she puts aside the potential distraction of her crush, Toby (Nick Eversman), and enlists Wesley (Robbie Amell), a slick but charming jock, to help reinvent herself. To save her senior year from turning into a total disaster, Bianca must find the confidence to overthrow the school’s ruthless label maker Madison (Bella Thorne) and remind everyone that no matter what people look or act like, we are all someone’s DUFF.
Why It Worked: Smart writing and a terrific young cast made The Duff one of the better coming of age films of the past decade. The film not only delivered an important message, it also had heart along with plenty of laughs.
Grandma starring Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer, Laverne Cox, and Sam Elliott
The Plot: Elle Reid (Lily Tomlin) has just gotten through breaking up with her girlfriend when Elle’s granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) unexpectedly shows up needing $600 bucks before sundown. Temporarily broke, Grandma Elle and Sage spend the day trying to get their hands on the cash as their unannounced visits to old friends and flames end up rattling skeletons and digging up secrets.
Why It Worked: Lily Tomlin and Julia Garner have solid chemistry in this unusual roadtrip film that appeals to adult audiences.
Magic Mike XXL starring Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Kevin Nash, Adam Rodriguez, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Elizabeth Banks
The Plot: Picking up the story three years after Mike (Channing Tatum) bowed out of the stripper life at the top of his game, Magic Mike XXL finds the remaining Kings of Tampa likewise ready to throw in the towel. But they want to do it their way: burning down the house in one last blow-out performance in Myrtle Beach, and with legendary headliner Magic Mike sharing the spotlight with them. On the road to their final show, with whistle stops in Jacksonville and Savannah to renew old acquaintances and make new friends, Mike and the guys learn some new moves and shake off the past in surprising ways.
Why It Worked: Magic Mike XXL accomplished something that doesn’t happen often with sequels: it was better than the original movie. The 2015 stripper comedy actually went for it while the original film held back far too much. Women wanted to see Tatum and the crew stripping and having fun on screen, and Magic Mike XXL served up just that.
Pitch Perfect 2 starring Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Hailee Steinfeld, Brittany Snow, Skylar Astin, Adam DeVine, Katey Sagal, Anna Camp, Ben Platt, Alexis Knapp, Hana Mae Lee, John Hodgman, Jason Jones, Joe Lo Truglio, Reggie Watts, John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks
The Plot: Becca, Chloe, Fat Amy, and the rest of the girls are back to compete in an international a cappella competition that no American team has ever won.
Why It Worked: The entire main cast returned and managed to capture the fun of the original film while not copying Pitch Perfect‘s formula but instead advancing the story. Elizabeth Banks stepped behind the camera to direct and did a terrific job of guiding the huge ensemble through the sequel.
Sisters starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, James Brolin, John Cena, John Leguizamo and Dianne Wiest
The Plot: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler reunite for Sisters, a film from Pitch Perfect director Jason Moore about two disconnected sisters summoned home to clean out their childhood bedroom before their parents sell the family house. Looking to recapture their glory days, they throw one final high-school-style party for their classmates, which turns into the cathartic rager that a bunch of ground-down adults really need.
Why It Worked: Amy Poehler and Tina Fey may not look like sisters but they know each other so well that there’s a genuine sisterly vibe that comes across in Sisters. An R-rated comedy for adults, this end-of-the-year offering is well worth a trip to the theater.
Spy starring Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jude Law, Jason Statham, Bobby Cannavale, Allison Janney, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and Miranda HartSusan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) is an unassuming, deskbound CIA analyst, and the unsung hero behind the Agency’s most dangerous missions. But when her partner (Jude Law) falls off the grid and another top agent (Jason Statham) is compromised, she volunteers to go deep undercover to infiltrate the world of a deadly arms dealer and prevent a global disaster.Melissa McCarthy is a great physical comedian, but with Spy she transforms into a believable action heroine. Jason Statham’s never been funnier, and Rose Byrne works so well off of McCarthy that the two (who worked together in Bridesmaids) need to get back together soon.
Ted 2 starring Mark Wahlberg, the voice of Seth MacFarlane, Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, John Slattery, and Morgan Freeman
The Plot: In the years since we last saw John and Ted, they’re both still living the dream in Boston. Although John is now a bachelor, Ted has settled down with Tami-Lynn, the trashy woman of his dreams. As marital problems begin to affect the newlyweds, Ted and Tami-Lynn decide to have a baby in order to save their marriage. Their hopes are crushed when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts declares Ted to be not a person, but property, and therefore ineligible to adopt. He is fired from his job at the grocery store and summarily informed that his marriage has been annulled. Angry and dejected, Ted channels his frustration and asks his best pal to help him sue the state and win him the rights that he deserves.
Why It Worked: Ted introduced the world to a trash-talking Teddy bear, but the sequel goes further and gives the not-so-snuggly bear a real personality.
Vacation starring Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Leslie Mann, Beverly D’Angelo, Chevy Chase, Chris Hemsworth, Skyler Gisondo, and Steele Stebbins
The Plot: The next generation of Griswolds is at it again-and on the road for another ill-fated adventure. Following in his father’s footsteps and hoping for some much-needed family bonding, a grown-up Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) surprises his wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate), and their two sons with a cross-country trip back to America’s “favorite family fun park,” Walley World.
Why It Worked: Some people were turned off by the very idea of a remake/re-imagining of Vacation, but this trip to Walley World remained true to both the tone and the spirit of the 1983 comedy. Plus, watching Chris Hemsworth strut around in his tighty whities was quite enjoyable!
The Voices starring Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick, and Jacki Weaver
The Plot: Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is that chipper guy clocking the nine-to-five at a bathtub factory, with the offbeat charm of anyone who could use a few friends. With the help of his court-appointed psychiatrist (Weaver), he pursues his office crush (Gemma Arterton). However, the relationship takes a sudden, murderous turn after she stands him up for a date. Guided by his evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog, Jerry must decide whether to keep striving for normalcy, or indulge in a much more sinister path.
Why It Worked: This twisted dark comedy/horror film came and went in theaters without anyone taking much notice, but it’s well worth checking out on DVD. Ryan Reynolds’ character carries on outrageous conversations with his dog and cat, and as the film goes on you’re actually rooting for the furry duo to survive the mayhem and star in their own spinoff.
What We Do in the Shadows starring Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Rhys Darby, Jonathan Brugh, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stu Rutherford, and Jackie Van Beek
The Plot: What We Do in the Shadows chronicles the adventures of four vampire roommates trying to get by in a modern world that’s not always hospitable to the undead. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi co-wrote, co-directed, and co-star in this hilarious send-up in which an endearingly unhip quartet of friends reveal to us or, rather, to the documentary crew that’s filming them, the details of their daily-make that nightly-routine. Ranging in age from 183 to 8,000, and in appearance from adorably youthful to Nosferatu-crusty, they squabble over household chores, struggle to keep up with the latest trends in technology and fashion, antagonize the local werewolves, cruise clubs for lovely ladies, and deal with the rigors of living on a very, very strict diet.
Why It Worked: The best mockumentary since Spinal Tap, What We Do in the Shadows is absolutely hilarious. Had this list not been sorted alphabetically, What We Do in the Shadows would have been featured in the top spot. | {
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MIAMI, February 16 – The Miami HEAT announced today that they have assigned forward Okaro White and guard Marcus Georges-Hunt to their NBA Development League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce.
White and Georges-Hunt, who were both named as NBA Development League All-Stars, will participate in the game on Saturday, February 18 at the Superdome in New Orleans. The game will air live on NBA TV at 2:30PM.
White has appeared in 14 games with the HEAT this season averaging 4.2 points, 2.5 rebounds and 16.2 minutes while shooting 46.2 percent (18-of-39) from the field, 42.1 percent (8-of-19) from three-point range and 93.8 percent (15-of-16) from the foul line. Earlier this season, he appeared in 23 games (all starts) for the HEAT’s NBA Development League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce, and averaged 18.4 points, 8.7 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 1.09 steals and 33.0 minutes while shooting 43.9 percent from the field and 86 percent from the foul line. He helped the Skyforce to a division best 16-5 record while ranking second on the team in points (424), rebounds (201), field goals made (144), three-point field goals made (38) and free throws made (98).
Georges-Hunt, who was signed to a 10-day contract by the HEAT on February 8, has not appeared in a game for Miami. He previously appeared in 32 games (27 starts) for the Maine Red Claws this season and averaged 16.4 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.03 steals and 36.7 minutes while shooting 46.6 percent from the field, 39.7 percent from three-point range and 86.1 percent from the foul line. When he signed with the HEAT, he led the NBA D-League in minutes (1,176) and among team leaders he ranked first in assists (133), second in rebounds (184), steals (32) and free throws made (118) and third in points (524) and field goals made (177). | {
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Dear radio stations,
You know you shouldn't be playing a song if you have to bleep parts out every two seconds | {
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The Liberal Party has handed Justin Trudeau a gift he dared not refuse, but will soon regret accepting.
One of the “priority resolutions” approved by delegates at their biennial convention in Montreal this past weekend calls for a Liberal government to “work with provinces and territories to design and implement a Basic Annual Income” for all Canadians.
The same gift was thrust into his father’s hands 42 years ago. Sen. David Croll, author of a groundbreaking parliamentary report, entreated Pierre Elliott Trudeau to introduce a Guaranteed Annual Income. “Let this be our priority project; a project that will stir the world’s imagination,” he urged Canada’s 15th prime minister. “We need search no further for a national purpose.”
Trudeau’s heart said yes. His head said no.
He chose reason over passion. “It’s a good theory,” he acknowledged. “But we cannot guarantee to bring everyone over the poverty line by giving them part of the taxpayers’ pocket.”
His son now faces the same dilemma. Promising a basic annual income in the 2015 election would demonstrate that the Liberals are progressive, compassionate and willing to take risks. It would make them Canada’s social policy leaders.
But it would be extremely expensive. It would be divisive, pitting those who stood to lose benefits and services against those whose incomes would rise. And it would require an unprecedented degree of federal-provincial-municipal co-operation. These pitfalls explain why no political leader in the world has moved to a full guaranteed income system.
The Liberal resolution, put forward by the Prince Edward Island delegation, didn’t provide much practical guidance. It didn’t define a basic annual income. It didn’t specify which programs and services would be subsumed into the new entitlement. And it didn’t talk about the cost.
That leaves Trudeau and his campaign team to come up with a model that is affordable; helps more Canadians than it hurts; and ensures that those who rely on existing services — social housing, subsidized child care, prescription drugs — remain whole.
Their task begins with three pivotal choices:
Where do they set the income floor? A Senate committee seeking solutions to urban poverty did some rudimentary calculations six years ago. It found that bringing everyone up to 70 per cent of Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off would cost roughly $20 billion. Using that as a yardstick — and taking inflation into account — it would cost about $32 billion to set the income floor at the poverty line.
What programs would be collapsed into the new benefit? The wider the net is cast, the lower the cost would be. Welfare and disability support and employment insurance are the obvious candidates. Beyond those three, tensions arise. Old age security is a possibility. But very few seniors live in poverty. The national child benefit could be included. But it, too, keeps thousands of low-income youngsters out of poverty. What about war veterans’ allowances, the universal child care benefit, funding to aboriginal organizations, support for agencies that serve the poor, the mentally ill, the homeless and hungry, new immigrants and racial minorities? What about the all the tax breaks targeted at low-income Canadians? The longer the list grows, the more potential losers there are.
How much are they willing to spend? If they opt for a lean, administratively efficient benefit, they could keep the cost almost as low as the existing array of social programs and services. But that would merely redistribute poverty, not reduce it. If they decide to lift Canadians out of poverty without asking seniors, children, First Nations or charities to sacrifice, they’d have to impose a substantial tax increase, which Trudeau has ruled out.
He could quietly drop or defer the resolution. It is not binding.
But there is a better alternative. He could follow his father’s example. Although Pierre Trudeau did disappoint proponents of a guaranteed annual income, he went on to triple family allowances and create the child tax credit.
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If his son can accomplish as much, socially progressive Liberals will have a proud record to uphold.
Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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Ted Cruz took some time out of his campaign schedule yesterday to sit down with ABC’s George Stephanopolous. Stephanopolous’ first question out of the gate was about Trump’s recent attacks on Cruz. Cruz’s response, basically, was to point out the obvious fact that Trump is basically obssessed with him, and that Cruz is not going to respond in kind.
Cruz: Donald is getting really rattled. I mean, it’s amazing. At every event, instead of actually talking about what he wants to do for the country, he just kind of stands up there and attacks me.
[cut to clip of Trump] Trump: People do not like Ted, to put it mildly…
Cruz: I like Donald Trump, I’ll sing his praises…
Stephanopolous: You still like him?!
Cruz: Abso.. he is bold, he’s brash, he’s an amazing marketer. I mean, this man is an entertainer and marketer par excellence, and so I’m not going to attack him personally. Now, I will draw policy distinctions. I think that’s fair game in politics. But the personal insults, no matter how ugly he gets, I will not respond in kind. | {
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A significant reveal from Days Of Our Lives Spoilers suggests that a major lawsuit is on the way. Apparently, it involves The Young and The Restless in some way! Sony is not treating the soap as it should. This has led to the existence of the lawsuit and is definitely something DOOL viewers would be interested in. This might affect the future of your favorite show. So, stay in the loop and take a look at some details.
Accusations On Sony Pictures Television By Corday Productions
Corday Productions have some accusations in line for Sony Pictures Television and its divisions. The allegations include distribution fraud and breaching a contract. If they manage to win, significant changes are upcoming. Ken Corday is running Corday Productions. He is also the executive producer of Days Of Our Lives. Even though Ken and his parents own a part of the show, they feel like Sony is making an attempt to exploiting their control.
Sony wholly owns The Young And The Restless. The accusation said that they are driving sole focus to the series by promoting it upfront. This means that they are leaving behind DOOL in the process.
Days Of Our Lives At An Economic Disadvantage
This step by Sony has brought DOOL to an economic disadvantage and has dramatically affected the revenue. According to the accusers, the show has lost some significant deals just because The Young And The Restless is too much into the limelight. Corday Productions has given a statement that legally represents the issue in detail. Let us take a look at the exact information derived from the official announcement by Corday Productions and the ones who have accused Sony of being partial in the first place.
Pierce O’Donnell, a member of the legal team, mentioned that instead of bringing DOOL out for the foreign markets, Sony is over-promoting Y&R.
Days Of Our Lives Spoilers: What Is Corday Productions Expecting?
Fans must be wondering what Corday Productions is up to. After all, what will they gain after all this commotion is over? What do they expect to achieve after throwing Sony under the bus? They seek out $ 20 million for taking back the control of the show and for some damage repair. This might be a really bold move out of the blue. But Corday Productions is confident and pretty insistent about it. They consider this a reasonable agreement as to compensate for giving all the limelight to The Young And The Restless.
Also read: ‘Days of Our Lives’ Spoilers: For Next Week – Jordan Has a Breakdown
Days Of Our Lives Spoilers: Drama Will Intensify
In the meantime, fans can stay tuned for the drama in Salem. Amidst all the accusations and lawsuits, you can’t expect the drama to decline. After all, it is a daily soap with a daily dose of thickening plot! What do you think will be the outcome of this lawsuit? Will the Corday Productions manage to make a win? Let us know what you think in the comments below. Stay tuned with TV Season Spoilers to get Days of Our Lives Spoilers and updates for upcoming episodes. | {
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Written by: Kelly on March 16, 2015.
This requires no more introduction than saying it’s a handful of thoughts worth considering and working through after the last week.
1. My feminism isn’t about making you comfortable.
As a feminist, I am not obligated to make you comfortable. As a feminist, what I owe is honesty, integrity, and truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Not liking my feminism is your problem, not mine.
2. Being part of an oppressed class means using subversive means.
Having a conversation in a calm, collective, “professional” manner depends entirely on how we define calm, collective, and “professional.” Those definitions are made through those in positions of power and privilege. And when the powerful class doesn’t want a critical lens turned on them, they will deny the oppressed class those calm, collective, “professional” tools.
So you do things in the way you need to to achieve a desired effect. Satire. Humor. Sarcasm. Protesting.
Those who don’t want to be criticized and don’t want to face the truth won’t listen to you anyway, so you do what you can, how you can, in order for everyone else to hear and understand.
3. Means, methods, tools, and places for criticism vary.
You can’t use the same critical tools in every situation. Your methods depend entirely upon your goal and on the subject and situation at hand. When talking about an issue of sexism, if talking about the texts at hand won’t do the job, then you pick up the next tool available to you. This includes public commentary and interviews.
Sometimes a blog post is effective. Sometimes Twitter is effective. Sometimes Tumblr. Sometimes the best tool isn’t online at all but in an interview in person. On a panel discussion. During a Q&A.
If one tool doesn’t work, you pick up another.
4. White male allies need to step back.
Quit patting yourself on the back for “empathy,” “niceness,” or “feminism,” especially if you’re a “nice, empathetic, feminist white guy.”
Use your platforms and your privilege to amplify the voices of the oppressed. You don’t need to interpret it through your perspective. Let others have your stage for a bit and listen.
As Eric Mortenson put so well — and this is hands down one of the best things I read this week: “If you’re really on women’s side, you don’t need to tell them. They’ll know.”
5. We love amplifying the white male ally voice.
Take a hard look at whose voices you’re relating to and sharing. If it looks like a sea of white men, reassess.
Watch who you’re crediting when you’re crediting an internet “kerfluffle.” Watch who you’re crediting when you’re crediting a discussion of sexism in publishing.
Bet it’s not the same people getting credit.
6. When you speak in generalities, people insist on examples. When you provide examples, you’re called a bully.
When you talk about institutional sexism in a broad sense, people want explicit examples. But when you provide explicit examples, you’re a bully for doing the very thing you were told you needed to do in order to prove your arguments legitimate.
7. “Nice” doesn’t mean above criticism.
Plenty of nice people screw up every day. Plenty of nice people have good intentions.
Your “niceness” doesn’t mean you’re above being critiqued or above being called out for a thing you did that’s not good. Your “niceness” doesn’t absolve you from responsibility. Your “niceness” has zero bearing on what you create and the art or thought you put out in the world.
8. Art and artist are not one in the same. It is HARD to separate art from artists, as well as art from personal taste.
We are complex, challenging creatures. We don’t always know what we’re doing when we’re doing it. We don’t always know what we’ve created until it’s outside of ourselves. Let’s be generous enough to allow artists to live separately from the art they’ve created.
Art and artist are also separate from personal taste. You may find someone’s art distasteful; I may find it enjoyable. That is not a reflection upon the artist or his talent.
9. Girls don’t get points for experimenting. They have to get it right the whole way through. Men are right when they try, even if they fail.
“Trying” to be better isn’t the same as being better. Especially in a world where women can never be right and are never getting better.
“Trying” doesn’t pass for women.
10. We insist we love critics and criticism until the heat is on.
Back in the day, artists used to critique one another and did so harshly. There wasn’t fear that saying something critical about another artist’s work meant doom for your own career.
Now that we rely on outside critics more often than not, in the form of trade reviews and yes, blog reviews, we constantly talk about the important role those criticisms play. Those who take this seriously do so because they care deeply about the art and they care deeply about representation, voice, accuracy, and a whole host of other things.
But as soon as critics start to actually criticize art, suddenly, they’re out for blood. They’re the enemies. They have a vendetta.
11. Criticism isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t fun.
It would be worthwhile to praise those critics who work with the heat is on high as much as it’s worthwhile to continually pat those on the back who praise things generously, with less criticism.
There are people who are absolutely, positively dedicated to change and fair representation. They put their criticisms out there every day in hopes of sparking change.
It’s not easy.
It’s NECESSARY.
It makes us BETTER.
12. You don’t get to determine whether someone’s concerns about sexism, or any other -ism, is correct or incorrect.
Just because it isn’t sexist to you doesn’t mean it’s not sexist to those who are speaking up about it, as well as the legions who are too scared to speak up or don’t have the means to speak up.
13. Nothing is either/or, but/and. Everything is a spectrum. Everything is complex.
Calling out a weakness in an author’s work — or a series of work — doesn’t mean that the rest of the work is done poorly. Badly drawn female characters are not an indictment against how the boys are written.
Suggesting that girls should be fully developed characters doesn’t take away from boys being fully developed or being the absolute center of the story. It’s not saying the books are bad.
It means readers want these stories, where both boys and girls are fully developed.
14. Sometimes people who are “outsiders” have to speak up because insiders are too close to the source.
Outsiders are reading the criticism. They offer a perspective that those too close to the art could never offer without bias.
Critics put their work out into the world for outsiders, not insiders.
It’s your job to help your friends and colleagues. It’s not mine.
15. Being called out sucks. Learn and do better.
We are all problematic. We are not without fault. And when you’re called out on something, it sucks, especially if you were trying everything to not be wrong. Sometimes you still are.
I am not above being called out. You are not above being called out. No one is.
Learn from your mistakes. Listen to those who are offering you insight. Then DO better. When you’re given the chance to learn from your mistakes, take it.
It takes privilege to leave the conversation before it’s over. And certainly, when you decide you’re exiting a conversation, rather than acknowledging it’s even happening — even with a simple “I am busy and can’t talk about this right now but will soon” — you’re not listening.
Listening means sticking around for the hard parts.
16. There aren’t fair levels of scaffolding in this industry. Be aware of yours and what others are.
Critics don’t usually have agents, editors, publicists, publishing houses or any other level of scaffolding behind them. There aren’t other people to step in and do damage control or offer up insight into process.
If there are people on your side with a financial stake in your career when you go up to bat for something, are selling a product, or creating art, you’re damn lucky.
17. You don’t get to invoke someone’s personal life as an excuse or value judgment. That’s theirs and theirs alone.
You aren’t empathetic or understanding when you invoke my mental illness as part of your “being understanding” of what I may be going through when I speak out. You also aren’t entitled to bring someone else’s personal life into the explanation for their creative weaknesses.
Those things are personal and the individual owning them is the only person who gets to invoke them in discussion, even if they’ve been open about it.
18. If you express criticism directly at someone, you’re a bully. If you don’t, you’re subtweeting/talking about them behind their backs.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. See #6. See #12.
19. Criticism isn’t bullying.
The purest definition of bullying is this: when a person with superior strength or influence uses their their influence to force a person to do what s/he wants.
Speaking up about sexism isn’t bullying.
Being told you should die and never come back or else you’ll be given a reason never to come back is bullying.
20. No one likes being called a cunt, a whore, a bitch, a pain in the ass, and no one deserves to be told they should be given something to be scared about.
Women don’t often engage in conversation about sexism because they are fun and the rewards are high. | {
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For the past 13 years, Taylor has been fighting a battle with investors, governments and the general public over the perception of the airship. ''I've never seen a more peculiar industry than ours,'' he says as he leads me through the makeshift office on a bright mid-June morning. ''There are more nutcases …'' He sighs and sips at his mug of Lady Grey. ''You get what we call 'the giggle factor'. People laugh at lighter-than-air vehicles and the guys who make them, the 'helium heads'. It's taken a long time to overcome that.'' The problem, Taylor admits, is that an airship has a deceptively simple, cartoonish appearance. It looks like a blobby thing with a motor, ''a party balloon with bits on'', as Mike Durham, the heavy-browed, sardonic chief engineer puts it. ''We're regularly sent unsolicited proposals telling us how to build airships,'' Durham says wearily. ''They're either from 85-year-olds who were once engineers in the pencil business, or little design companies who think they've had a brilliant new idea and this is how it should be done.'' This may not sound like a serious problem, but it is. Fred in his shed in Hertfordshire isn't likely to put forward a proposal to the government to build a new aeroplane, because big companies like Airbus and Boeing are so well established. But he and dozens of other mad inventors will merrily deluge the government with their ideas for a marvellous new airship. It makes the industry look silly and brings the credibility of the whole business into question, which in turn frightens away would-be investors. Airship amateur hour is especially frustrating for the team at Cardington because they're in the process of creating something that absolutely could not be sketched on the back of a beer mat. And Taylor is most particular about the nomenclature of the new development: it's not an ''airship'', he says, it's a ''hybrid air vehicle''.
''It's a new vehicle. It's a hybrid because we're combining helium lift, aerodynamic lift, a hovercraft landing system and vectored thrust. If you can get beyond the word airship - because that has a lot of history - people think about them differently.'' Whatever you want to call it, the new technology has just won the company (or rather, its US defence contractor ally Northrop Grumman) a contract with the US Department of Defence to the tune of half a billion dollars. In just 12 months, the team at Cardington must build a 91-metre-long surveillance vehicle capable of staying airborne for 21 days at a time. It will be known as the LEMV (Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle). The LEMV will hover above Afghanistan at 6100 metres, equipped with the sort of super-powerful cameras that can read a signature on a letter from miles away. It will be, Taylor says, ''an unblinking eye'', recording every move made on the ground. In theory, no one will be able to plant a roadside bomb - a device that has claimed the lives of so many US and allied soldiers - without the cameras seeing who did it and, more importantly, where they came from. And, if the LEMV is a success, it could prove to be a tipping point, ushering in a new age of airships. When I first spoke to Taylor on the phone he gave a seductive account of what long-distance travel might be like in a SkyCat, the civilian version of the airship that the company has designed. ''Imagine you're with 400 of your best friends,'' he said, almost convincing me that I had 400 best friends. ''You go to Richmond Park International. At 11 o'clock on Thursday you get on board the SkyCat200. There are hundreds of staterooms on it and you dinner dance your way across the Atlantic. At 2 o'clock on Friday afternoon you're getting off at the East River in New York. You've travelled 3000 miles overnight and there's no jet lag.''
Ever since the first hot air balloon took off in Annonay, southern France, 227 years ago, the sky has rarely been empty of dirigibles, sources of great wonder and fear to their earthbound watchers. The earliest hydrogen balloon took off from the Champ de Mars in Paris in 1783. When it touched down 45 minutes later in a field beside the village of Gonesse, terror-stricken townsfolk tore it to pieces with pitchforks and scythes. It was almost 100 years later before the first true airship - an engine-powered navigable balloon - lifted off. People experimented with airships powered by foot pedals and propellers and electric motors. Some were killed, but the idea of the airship was always compelling enough to survive. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin founded his eponymous company in 1896. With him, the age of the giant airships began and in Germany zeppelins became a national obsession. They seemed to possess an almost mythic power: like ''fabulous silver fish'', said Dr Hugo Eckener, head of Zeppelin from 1917, ''floating quietly in the ocean of air''. In 1937, though, the spell was broken. On May 6, the Hindenburg zeppelin arrived at Lakehurst, New Jersey, after an Atlantic crossing it had made many times before. On this occasion there was one key difference: the United States had refused to supply the swastika-adorned airship with helium, so it was filled instead with hydrogen. As welcoming cameras rolled it was suddenly consumed by fire, stripped to a skeleton in a blazing instant. A description by one radio reporter went around the world: ''Get out of the way!'' he screamed into his microphone. ''It's burning, bursting into flames! This is terrible! It is one of the worst catastrophes in the world! Oh the humanity! Those passengers! I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen.''
With this disaster, the long winter of the popular airship began. The unofficial motto of the modern airship industry could be, ''Don't mention the Hindenburg!'' Gordon Taylor tries to put things in perspective. ''Just remember that the Hindenburg happened at around the time of the Titanic. But they didn't have a camera on the Titanic, did they? Think about that when you look around the QE2,'' he says. The Titanic comparison is much loved at Cardington. Even before Hindenburg happened, a long shadow already lay over the British airship industry. Standing by the hangars at Cardington facing south, you see the land undulate ever so slightly, rising to the meanest of hills. On its maiden voyage in 1931, His Majesty's Airship R101, a colossal vehicle almost 244 metres long, barely cleared those hills. Preparations for the inaugural flight had been hastily made and the ship was leaking large amounts of hydrogen. The R101 managed to make it across the Channel, but at 2.08am on October 5, about 70 kilometres north of Paris, it hit high ground and crashed, killing 48 people.
Some 40 years later, a young naval architect named Roger Munk found himself in possession of a book called The Millionth Chance. It was an account of the events leading up to the crash of the R101. (When Lord Thomson, the head of the air ministry, was asked whether he thought anything could go wrong with the airship's flight, he answered: ''But for the millionth chance, no.'') Munk died at the beginning of this year at the age of 63, but he is integral to the story of the hybrid air vehicle. After he read that book, in 1971, he went to meet Lord Ventry, who had been a passionate advocate of airships for decades. He sketched out all the problems that Munk would have to conquer to make the vessels viable and that's what Munk spent the next 40-odd years doing. His efforts made him the father of modern airships. Today, nearly everyone who works at Cardington talks about Munk's almost evangelical belief in the technology. One of those admirers is senior aerodynamicist Ken Nipress. His manner is that of a matter-of-fact Yorkshireman. ''We like what we do,'' he says, ''and we think it has got a future.'' In a rectangular white marquee, I am shown that future; a 15-metre-long, roughly oblong balloon pumped up with helium. This is the LEMV prototype. A faint plasticky smell comes off the balloon's synthetic, off-white skin. Every 10 minutes or so a machine that sounds like a vacuum cleaner whirs into life, topping up the pressure inside the oblong. Lying in the marquee it looks like a sick whale on a respirator. But appearances are deceptive. The technology behind the prototype is complex. The calculations it takes to work out the flow of air around a hybrid air vehicle are almost too Byzantine for a computer to process.
''We've got an office full of guys who've all come out of the aircraft industry and we need every ounce of their brainpower to design these,'' Durham says. The material used for the ''envelope'' (the balloon) is ultra-lightweight, UV-proofed, super-strong polyester. The shape is engineered to provide its own lift - the air that rushes over the curved top of the vehicle creates a vacuum that pulls the whole thing up. It flies with fibre-optic controls, which turn physical steering movements into light signals that pulse down thin strands of glass and tell the rudders which way to steer. It's fuel efficient and could run with virtually zero carbon dioxide emissions. When I ask Dave Burns, the taciturn test pilot, what it feels like to fly in an airship, he turns poetic. ''It's just, it's a feeling of freedom. And the detail you can see: you can fly over the field out there a hundred times and see different things every time.'' In strong, windy weather, it moves like a ship on a rough sea. Gusts of wind affect it as little as a flea biting an elephant. Although EU regulations mean that seat belts are compulsory, it's a smooth ride. There's a niggling worry I have about the LEMV squatting over Afghanistan: surely a giant white balloon will be vulnerable to attack. Fortunately, that's something they've thought about a great deal at Cardington. Indeed, they've been thinking about it for many years now, because they also designed ships that were to be deployed over Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
At that time they tested a full-sized airship against a range of artillery, including surface-to-air missile. What they learnt was this: the airship is almost invincible to attack. Helium is an inert gas, so it doesn't explode. The pressure inside the envelope is so low that when a hole is made, say by a bullet, air seeps out slowly rather than rushing out catastrophically. Missiles need something hard to connect with if they're going to explode, but an airship is accommodating, not hard-shelled. And what of helium, the scarcity of which damned the Hindenburg? If lighter-than-air vehicles were to become a regular form of transport, would any country be in a position to monopolise the new resource? Could helium wars, commanded by squeaky-voiced generals, break out? Taylor thinks not. Helium is a major component of our atmosphere, but its tiny particles are hard to get a grip on. One day we may develop the technology to extract it from the air (although, Taylor adds, ''not in my lifetime and not in my son's lifetime''). Until then there are massive naturally occurring stockpiles of the gas in the US, Poland, Russia and Canada. Recently, a huge reserve of helium was discovered in the Gulf state of Qatar. Currently, the lighter-than-air market uses only 2 per cent of all the helium bought in the world. Most of that is used to blow up party balloons. One other supposed impediment to the development of the airship has been its relative lack of speed. ''If you go to an airforce, you get pilots,'' Taylor says. ''Pilots like to fly fast things that go zoom and boom.'' But that machismo doesn't mean there isn't a market for the stately globetrotting airship. The hybrid air team have speculatively mocked up grand interiors for such vessels, which could be competitors to the great ocean liners.
Realistically, SkyCats would be most useful in the transport of heavy loads - the largest SkyCat can carry up to 200 tonnes - to harsh environments, like the Arctic territories of Nunavut. ''The average age there is 21,'' Taylor says, ''and it's got the highest suicide rate, highest drug rate, highest sickness rate in Canada by a long shot. They've got nothing - this vehicle will save their lives.'' For now, the men of Hybrid Air Vehicles must work at frightening speed to deliver their LEMV to the US government. Taylor expects the team to expand to almost three times its existing size. Roger Munk used to say that the giant sheds at Cardington weren't much use for anything other than airships or giraffe farming. Soon, perhaps, his team will bring airships back to their rightful home. TELEGRAPH | {
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Writer-director Christopher MacBride is becoming a go-to guy for graphic novel adaptations. After adapting a slew of others around town, he has been tapped by Sony and producer Josh Bratman at Immersive Pictures to adapt the Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire graphic novel A.D. After Death.
MacBride was previously hired to write and is attached to direct Sony’s Amensia, a sci-fi thriller based on the Arcana Comics graphic novel by Dwayne Harris. FilmNation is producing that film. He also previously wrote and is attached to direct Echo at 20th Century Fox and 21 Laps.
And, on top of that, he most recently adapted the graphic novel Scout, created by Timothy Truman, for Studio 8 and producer Braden Aftergood.
A.D. After Death is a three-part epic set in a future where a genetic cure for death has been found. Years after the discovery, one man starts to question everything, leading him on a mind-bending journey that will bring him face-to-face with his past and his own mortality. Snyder (Batman) and Lemire (Essex County) will serve as executive producers of the project. Eric Fineman is overseeing for Sony.
Sony also has on its development slate Lemiere’s sci-fi comic Descender. Bratman, (Fright Night, Priest) has a number of projects in development including an untitled John Lennon-Yoko Ono project and The Harlem Hellfighters.
MacBride is repped by ICM Partners, Industry Entertainment and by attorney Adam Kaller at Hansen, Jacobson. | {
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In apparently genuine manifesto, senior commander tells his men they tried to impose Islamic law too quickly
A document that purports to reveal al-Qaida's strategy in north Africa has been recovered from one of the government buildings used by rebels in the north of Mali.
The document was found at the ministry of finance's regional audit department in Timbuktu by the Associated Press and is signed by Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, also known as Abdelmalek Droukdel, a senior commander of the insurrection in Mali.
He warns his men to be diplomatic and not rush to impose sharia law. In the document, which takes the form of a letter divided into six chapters, he urges them to be more gentle, like a parent.
"The current baby is in its first days, crawling on its knees, and has not yet stood on its two legs," he wrote.
"If we really want it to stand on its own two feet in this world full of enemies waiting to pounce, we must ease its burden, take it by the hand, help it and support it until it stands."
It is not clear where Droukdel is writing from or to whom.
He scolds his fighters for being too forceful. "Every mistake in this important stage of the life of the baby will be a heavy burden on his shoulders. The larger the mistake, the heavier the burden on his back, and we could end up suffocating him suddenly and causing his death," he wrote.
Mathieu Guidere of the University of Toulouse, who manages a database of al-Qaida documents, said: "This is a document between the Islamists that has never been put before the public eye.
"It confirms something very important, which is the divisions about the strategic conception of the organisation. There was a debate on how to establish an Islamic state in north Mali and how to apply sharia."
In the document, Droukdel acknowledges al-Qaida is vulnerable to foreign intervention, and that international and regional pressure "exceeds our military and financial and structural capability for the time being".
"It is very probable, perhaps certain, that a military intervention will occur … which in the end will either force us to retreat to our rear bases or will provoke the people against us.
"Taking into account this important factor, we must not go too far or take risks in our decisions or imagine that this project is a stable Islamic state."
According to his own online biography, Droukdel is 44, born in Zayan, Algeria. He enrolled into the technology department of a local university before he began making explosives for Algerian rebels.
In 2006, the group to which he belonged, known as the GSPC, became an arm of al-Qaida.
When the rebels took over northern Mali 10 months ago, they were initially tolerated but then started to whip women for not covering up and amputate the limbs of suspected thieves.
Droukdel wrote that the application of sharia law was hasty. "One of the wrong policies that we think you carried out is the extreme speed with which you applied sharia, not taking into consideration the gradual evolution that should be applied in an environment that is ignorant of religion.
"Our previous experience proved that applying sharia this way, without taking the environment into consideration, will lead to people rejecting the religion, and engender hatred toward the mujahideen, and will consequently lead to the failure of our experiment."
He criticised the destruction of Timbuktu's World Heritage-listed shrines, because, "on the internal front we are not strong".
He also tells the fighters he disapproves of their religious punishment for adulterers – stoning to death – and their lashing of people, "and the fact that you prevented women from going out, and prevented children from playing, and searched the houses of the population. Your officials need to control themselves". | {
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Cadance: Aww... Look at my proud looking husband.
Shining Armor: Yeah. Glad to be wear that armor again. I feel it's always part of me.
C: I hope you washed that said part of yourself since the last time you wore it.
S: Uh, no. Why?
C: *gasp* Shining!
S: What?
C: As a captain and now a prince, MY prince, I won't allow my prince to smell like a...
S: Dirty stallion?
C: Ewww! Don't say that! Ponies could her you!
S: Don't you dramatize it a bit too much? What's wrong about smelling like a dirty sta- Oh.
C: Mmmhmm. And if you don't go wash it this instant I... I will talk about it to your mother.
S: Doesn't bother me.
C: My aunt Celestia?
S: She knows we work hard and it's part of the job.
C: Twilight?
S: Hahaha. You know very well she could stop bathing for days when she so much into a series of novel.
Cadance let her head drop, close to be defeated when suddenly she got it and smiled. She walked closer to her husband, put her muzzle closer to his ear, telling in a whisper.
C: I will wait until you will be in front of your formation for the one I have in mind.
She she walked away, a grin on her face.
S: Huh? What? Cadance? Love? About what? About what?!? Please tell me!
She stopped and looked over her shoulder.
C: Just wash your armor or... you'll see.
Shining stood there, confused.
S: I know she couldn't do that. She loves me too much for humiliating me in front of the guys... Isn't she? *sigh* I better wash it now. Just in case.
Wonderful work | {
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