Ashleigh Stone are favoured with instructions for this fantastic and recently modernised four bedroom town house situated a stone's throw from the beach and enjoying the most fantastic views of the Estuary from all three floors. The Master bedroom suite occupying the whole third floor and includes a decked balcony with glass balustrade and built in hot tub all with stunning Estuary views. The property also comes with an additional balcony to lounge and its own double garage and off street parking to the front.
This Marine residence now comes with a stunning master suite with a decked balcony with a glass balustrade incorporating a hot tub all with stunning panoramic views. The open planing living area is perfect for entertaining and again has a decked balcony over looking the Estuary.
Modern entrance door, radiator, stairs rising to first floor with storage cupboard under and doors off.
Chrome pedestal wash hand basin, low level WC, shower cubicle, radiator and wood flooring.
Entered from the landing via wooden double doors, this room has a set of bi fold doors that offer an outstanding view of the Estuary that will make you want to just stare out of the window. The room has wooden floors, radiators and is open on to the kitchen area.
Entered from the landing via wooden double doors, this room has a set of 6 panel bi fold doors with built in blinds that offer an outstanding view of the Estuary that will make you want to just stare out of the window. The room has wooden floors, radiators and is open on to the kitchen area.
Double glazed window to rear, a modern white high gloss kitchen with quartz work top. Built in Bosh oven, built in five ring gas hob with an extractor over, built in microwave and Miele coffee machine. There is also a fridge, freezer and drinks fridge.Island with a quartz work top with an inset sink with a cut in drainer with a mixer tap and cupboards below, and a door leads to the utility room.
Double glazed door to the rear, modern white high gloss units and stone work top to match the kitchen with inset sink with mixer tap.
Carpet, built in cupboard and doors off.
Double patio doors to front with a Juliet balcony with great Estuary views, radiator, fitted wardrobes, drawers and unit.
Double glazed patio doors to front with a Juliet balcony over looking the Estuary, radiator, carpet and fitted wardrobe.
Double glazed window to rear, radiator, carpet and door to the en suite.
Tiled double shower cubicle, hand basin, low level wc and tiled floor.
Obscure double glazed window to rear, bath, wall mounted wash hand basin, low level WC, chrome towel rail, heated flooring, tiled to walls and tiled flooring.
Double glazed window to rear, carpet and door to.
Folding doors with stunning views of the Estuary on opening on to a full width balcony, radiators, carpet and door into a walk in wardrobe.
Obscure Double glazed window to the rear, bath with shower over and a screen, wc and floating hand basin, tiled walls and floor and a heated chrome towel rail.
Decked balcony with glass balustrade and built in bath to relax and enjoy the great views.
Off street parking for up to three cars.
Electronically operated up and over door.


Nicole Kidman wears the Duet Pinky Ring while accepting her Emmy award last night.
Last night's Emmy Awards were a triumph for diversity and inclusiveness. Awards went to the likes of Riz Ahmed, who won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series, making him the first South Asian man in Emmy's 69-year history to win for acting. Or Lena Waithe, who is the first African American woman to win for comedic writing.
There was one message, though, that was quietly making a statement without saying a word.
Two Hollywood stars who were also winners last night, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley, were both spotted wearing Duet Pink Rings by the company dedicated to creating a "supportive, powerful network for the women in its tribe," Shiffon Co.
A close-up of the Duet Pinky Ring on Actress, Shailene Woodley, at the 69th Annual Emmy Awards.
The adjustable pinky ring that coils around the finger and ends with two stones (a sapphire and diamond, or diamond and diamond) represents a pinky promise, referencing the unbreakable pact you made when you were kids. The idea behind the Duet Pinky Ring is that it serves as a physical reminder to promise to pay it forward to other women. The side-by-side stones were even designed to represent one woman supporting one another.
"We wanted to build an innovative and empowered brand for women since so many of the top household names were founded by men," says the jewelry company's founder, Shilpa Yarlagadda.
Shiffon Co., a collective of eight women who are still undergrads at top universities like Harvard and Stanford, are donating 50% of the sales of the rings to seed grants for start-ups around the world whose mission it is to support, uplift, educate or promote the well-being, safety, health and general advancement of women and girls.
These driven group of students were able to get the rings onto the hands of these A-listers simply through the potency of the company mission--they did not use PR or pay the actors to wear them. Instead, the women behind Shiffon Co. got through to Kidman and Woodley and pitched the ring. The two actors then decided the cause was one they wanted to support and wore the pinky ring to the Emmys in solidarity with the company mission. Before them, Emma Watson donned the ring and gave it a shout out on her Instagram account dedicated to her fashion, the_press_tour.
Like Kidman and Watson, Hitha Herzog, Chief Research Officer of H Squared Research, was one of those people on the other end of a cold call from the team at Shiffon Co. Herzog, too, was so moved by their mission, she joined their Board of Directors. "Shilpa's email to me was short but thought-provoking, she didn't add extra words or bury the lede," Herzog says. "Then I met with her and was blown away. When asked, Shilpa answered all of my questions in a way that displayed she had a good grasp on how retail works. Most importantly, she was a genuinely kind person."
Similarly, celebrity stylist, Sarah Slutsky, also received a call from the founders, which led to her becoming one of the company's closest mentors. "I get a lot emails from people who are looking to start a business or get into fashion, but something about their energy right off the bat felt really different. There was a need to give back and to do something bigger than them," says Slutsky. "And as a stylist, jewelry is very important to me and what I do. It's very personal and representative, so it's nice to be able to present something to clients that has such meaning."
With the company motto, "wear the change you want to see," these young founders aspire to bring the best in humanity by working to create a world where young girls grow up knowing they can follow their passions with the support of a worldwide network of strong women.
"We want people to stand up for what they believe in by supporting other women," adds Yarlagadda. "It's crazy, but I think we can create a more connected and supported world for women through making beautiful jewelry."


Two ducks found frozen on ice were freed when a third duck called out for help.
Two ducks had found themselves stuck in an icy lake after plunging temperatures in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China.
It was the loud call from a third duck that attracted the attention of Qingdao Forest Wildlife World staff, who rushed to the lake to free the first bird.
They noticed another trapped bird not too far away, so using their inflatable boat, the staff proceeded to complete their rescue.
Earlier this year another animal caught in a sticky situation was also rescued.
Stuck in a manhole of a drainage system in Santiago, Chile, Strawberry the bull had to be pulled out after bystanders witnessed the bovine trip and fall into the manhole .
Strawberry didn’t need the call of a fellow bull in this case, but he was lucky to be pulled out by the team with only minor injuries.


The PPP model has been made mandatory in metro rail projects, but it has not been successful in at least three cities – Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
The cabinet chaired by prime minister Narendra Modi approved a new Metro Rail Policy that makes PPP component mandatory for availing central assistance of new metro projects. Private investment and other innovative forms of financing of metro projects have been made compulsory to meet the huge resource demand for capital intensive high capacity metro projects.
“Private participation either for complete provision of metro rail or for some unbundled components (like Automatic Fare Collection, Operation & Maintenance of services etc) will form an essential requirement for all metro rail projects seeking central financial assistance,” says the policy, to capitalize on private resources, expertise and entrepreneurship.
“Nobody will come forward for construction of Metro rail as it has never been a profitable investment. Private players will look at least 12-15% return while no Metro project has ever yielded an investment return of over 2-3%. It’s the most disastrous and retrograde urban transport policy,” Sreedharan told the Indian Express.
The PPP model has run into rough weather in Delhi, Mumbai as well as Hyderabad.
In 2012, Delhi Metro's Airport Express project developer, Reliance Infrastructure, sent a notice to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and sought termination of the project.
The Reliance Infra-led consortium has been using the safety excuse to abandon the project. The cost of the Airport Express line was Rs 18,000 crore, but it suffered a loss of Rs 300 crore in the first year of operation, reported India Today.
Five years later, Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL), a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure, won an arbitration against DMRC, which would fetch the company a compensation of Rs 2,950 crore for the termination of the concession agreements for the project, the Anil Ambani-led company said in a statement, reported Economic Times.
The story was similar in Mumbai where Reliance Infrastructure-owned Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd (MMOPL), operates the 11.4 km Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar metro line, said in June 2016 that it was incurring huge losses.
Reliance runs MMOPL in a public–private partnership with Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).
“MMOPL is incurring annual loss over Rs 300 crore and cash loss of about Rs 175 crore per annum. This loss is preliminary on account of increase in project cost due to delay in receipt of unencumbered Right of Way (RoW) / Land by Government & Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). Further, 100 percent unencumbered RoW / Land was to be given to us by September 2007 as per the Concession Agreement, but was finally handed over to us in February 2014, a month before we applied for CMRS (commissioner of metro railway safety) certification,'' MMOPL spokesperson told Business Standard.
Reliance Infrastructure also told the Bombay High Court in August 2016 that it was incurring daily losses of Rs 1 crore to keep the services running. “For the project, we put in Rs 4,000 crore, of which a large chunk was borrowed. We now have to start repaying that. Initially, the MMRDA had promised that they would put in Rs 1,500 crore, but in the end, only contributed Rs 600 crore,” senior counsel Janak Dwarkadas told Justice VM Kanade and Justice MS Sonak, reported Mid Day.
Hyderabad too saw the PPP model running into trouble.
In September 2014, Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), the company building the Rs.16,375 crore Hyderabad Metro rail project, threatened to pull out because of issues relating to project viability and non-availability of right of way.
L&T proposed that the Telangana government take over the project.
“GoT should do so by restituting the concessionaire in a manner whereby the concessionaire’s property and entitlements are returned to it,” V.B. Gadgil, chief executive and managing director of L&T Hyderabad Metro Rail Pvt. Ltd, wrote in a letter, reported The Mint.
The new metro rail policy announced on Wednesday stresses that it opens a big window for private investments.
Private investment and other innovative forms of financing of metro projects have been made compulsory to meet the huge resource demand for capital intensive high capacity metro projects.
Seeking to ensure that least cost mass transit mode is selected for public transport, the new policy mandates Alternate Analysis, requiring evaluation of other modes of mass transit like BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit System), Light Rail Transit, Tramways, Metro Rail and Regional Rail in terms of demand, capacity, cost and ease of implementation.
The new policy mandates Transit Oriented Development (TOD) to promote compact and dense urban development along metro corridors since TOD reduces travel distances besides enabling efficient land use in urban areas. Under the policy, States need to adopt innovative mechanisms like Value Capture Financing tools to mobilize resources for financing metro projects by capturing a share of increase in the asset values through ‘Betterment Levy’. States would also be required to enable low cost debt capital through issuance of corporate bonds for metro projects.
At present, metro projects with a total length of 370 km are operational in 8 cities -- Delhi (217 km), Bengaluru (42.30 km), Kolkata (27.39 km), Chennai (27.36 km), Kochi (13.30 km), Mumbai (Metro Line 1-11.40 km, Mono Rail Phase 1-9.0 km), Jaipur-9 km and Gurugram (Rapid Metro-1.60 km).
Metro Projects with a total length of 537 kms are in progress in 13 cities. New cities acquiring metro services are; Hyderabad (71 km), Nagpur (38 km), Ahmedabad (36 km), Pune (31.25 km) and Lucknow (23 km).
Metro projects with a total length of 595 km in 13 cities including 10 new cities are at various stages of planning and appraisal. These are; Delhi Metro Phase IV- 103.93 km, Delhi & NCR-21.10 km, Vijayawada-26.03 km, Visakhapatnam-42.55 km, Bhopal-27.87 km, Indore-31.55 km, Kochi Metro Phase II-11.20 km, Greater Chandigarh Region Metro Project-37.56 km, Patna-27.88 km, Guwahati-61 km, Varanasi-29.24 km, Thiruvananthapuram & Kozhikode (Light Rail Transport)-35.12 km and Chennai Phase II-107.50 km.


I’ve always had an interest in colour. Coming from Scotland, where the weather often turns everything grey, I used to love how the landscape would transform when the sun came out. I had a view of the Ochil hills from my bedroom window which became an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colours through the seasons.
It was this blend of colours in nature that gave me my first introduction into colour harmony. In the world around us colours juxtapose with one another all the time, but the very fact that they do means it’s often easy to take the striking harmonies they produce for granted. Think about an inky grey sky against a wet green hill, or a bright orange beak against a blackbird’s feathers. Even the bright red poppy, which brightens yellow and green fields around the country, is made redder and more distinctive by the green stem and leaves which support it. Of course, there’s no real need to understand how colour works (unless, like me, you have to!). But just as learning the musical structure of a favourite song or finding out the backstory of a favourite novel enhances our appreciation for those works, so too can understanding colour harmonies enhance how we see.
Colour therefore plays a crucial role in our lives. It can remind us of a place, a smell, a time of year, a person; our memories and cultures are filled with colour associations. They can even have different meanings from one culture to another. For example, in Japanese culture, yellow represents bravery and wealth, whilst in France the same colour represents jealousy and betrayal. In many cultures, blue represents masculinity, whereas it is considered a feminine colour in China. And red – the colour of danger, passion, love and fear in countless western cultures – is actually symbolic of mourning in South Africa.
Above all, colour is something that we can have an instinctive and long-lasting personal reaction to. We either like or don’t like certain colours and we don’t need words to explain why, because our emotive response to colours were there well before language developed – before we gave them names. My favourite colour is blue – which may well be most people’s favourite colour – and I can’t imagine it ever becoming boring for me. There are so many beautiful blues in art. I love Matisse’s blue cut-out nudes, for which he used gouache straight from the tube, painted it onto sheets of paper and then “cut” directly into colour. The French artist Yves Klein fell so in love with blue that not only did he make it the star of both his paintings and performances, he also patented his own shade: Yves Klein Blue.
This book is a celebration of colour. I hope people will find inspiration in the illustrations and learn a few things they didn’t know. Most importantly, I hope it encourages people to have a bolder relationship with the colours in the world around them.


WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close it. The international community has condemned it.
On Christmas Eve, however, when it came time for him to wish some American service members a Merry Christmas for his last time in office, President George W. Bush rang up a North Carolina man who's assigned to the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Neil Ambrose, of Edenton, N.C., answered the call at the remote Navy base in southeast Cuba.
The president stuck to a template of thanking Ambrose for his service, a White House tradition, and then broke from the script.


The biannual Antiques Show & Sale with appraisal clinic is this weekend at the Carson Valley Inn in Minden. Show times are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
The show is in the ballrooms and meeting rooms on the lower level. Access is available from valet parking on the north side of the CVI.
Dealers from Nevada and California will exhibit furniture, primitives, sun-purpled glass, porcelain signs, railroad items, Western items, baseball cards, comic books, jewelry, textiles, books, firearms and yard art.
The show features an appraisal clinic where family treasures may be appraised for $5 per item with no limit of items. Appraisals of large items are possible from good photographs.


When Rick Gates turned against his former boss, he described a parallel ethical universe where lying and cheating were as comfortable as a well-tailored ostrich suit.
You know what would be surprising? If Rick Gates and Paul Manafort had suddenly suspended their apparently deeply ingrained habits of fraudulence and thievery during the three months they ran the Donald Trump campaign.
Other chapters of their recent history—the chapters bracketing the campaign—include alleged episodes of witness tampering, lying to federal prosecutors, bank and tax fraud, as well as the failure to register as agents of a foreign government. Therefore, given all that has emerged about their shared ethical framework, it’s hard to imagine that the public has received the exhaustive account of those months.
To understand just how ingrained their slippery habits had become, consider a defining moment from Monday’s proceedings of the Manafort trial. In the course of turning state’s witness against his old boss, Gates, a former lobbyist, admitted to the court that he had repeatedly defrauded Manafort by inflating the expense reports he submitted to him. It wasn’t a trivial sum that he had siphoned. He described his take as amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or put it this way: Gates defrauded Manafort, who was, in turn, allegedly defrauding banks and the United States government (with his Potemkin tax returns).
Nor was there anything necessarily spiteful about Gates filching a little cash on the sly. Based on everything I’ve ever heard or read in the course of my reporting on Manafort, Gates worshipped his boss. He felt a sense of subservience, love even. And the warmth was mutual, and could be described as filial. But that bond was never going to get in the way of bilking Manafort. They had spent nearly a decade in Ukraine, working for oligarchs and politicians. During those years abroad, the pair adopted the business practices of the Ukrainian political elite.
The president would then ask his chief of staff to collect contributions from the financial patrons of his political party. One Manafort associate told me that in the course of passing the hat to oligarchs, the chief of staff would collect more money than the bill required. The chief of staff would pocket some of that surplus cash for himself, a small tax for his efforts. In Ukraine, the rich excel at finding novel ways to exact fees, to skim money, to capture rents. Having participated in the system for so long, it seems Manafort and Gates internalized these techniques themselves.
So what? One strand of conventional wisdom holds that the Manafort trial has little to do with Trump, let alone Russian collusion. Indeed, there’s a strong argument to be made that this case stands on its own as a significant moment in political history. But we’re still staring at a highly incomplete version of the full narrative—and it’s too soon to foreclose the possibility that this trial is merely prologue, filled with foreshadowing and suggestive hints of how everything might ultimately tie together.
Last week, I argued that Manafort needs to be understood as a symptom of a global epidemic of kleptocracy—a virus that he imported into the United States. We know that his tenure in the Trump campaign contains at least some evidence that he infected the campaign, too. According to Robert Mueller’s prosecutors, Manafort promised a job on the campaign to a Chicago banker in exchange for $16 million in loans. The banker ended up as one of the Trump campaign’s 13 official economic advisors. Could it be possible that that’s the only instance of Manafort and Gates applying their Ukrainian education to the Trump campaign?
With Gates’s testimony, Mueller has orchestrated an important demonstration project. He’s shown how he can turn protégé against mentor, how he can weaponize a devoted underling to destroy his beloved boss. How once he can get a campaign insider talking, what flows is damning beyond expectations. The question is now whether Gates’s testimony represents the culmination of a long and corrupt story, or the opening pages of a much more complicated tale.


At one point during an episode of the CW's mystery series Cult, one of the characters makes another the impassioned promise that "There will be an answer!" Given the show's intense love affair with metafiction, I wondered if the line might be a winking acknowledgement that it's only the latest in a long line of post-Lost series that revolves around a slowly unfolding puzzle, a subgenre that from its progenitor on has been long on teases and short on actual answers. I also thought to myself, they better give us that answer in season one because there's no way this thing's going to get picked up again. The end seems to have come sooner than I expected. Yesterday, the CW announced that its slot for the next three Fridays will be filled by reruns of The Carrie Diaries.
Cult's incredibly convoluted central conceit is that in the fictional Cult universe there is a show called Cult about a police officer on a mission to take down Billy Grimm, the charismatic leader of the highly unorthodox religious sect that she was raised in, and that it's spawned a massive, intensely obsessive fan base with a radical wing that essentially worships Grimm as if he were a real-life spiritual leader and has begun to dabble in ritualized murder. Jeff, a journalist, has a mentally ill brother, Nate, who becomes consumed with solving the meta-show's puzzles and disappears under highly suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a crazy-looking trove of research indicating that the Cult cult's responsible. Skye is a production assistant on the meta-show who discovers the so-called True Believers by monitoring the online communities that have sprung up around the show and begins to suspect that its secretive, eccentric executive producer, Stephen Rae (who in a clever extra-meta twist is credited as executive producer of the real Cult), is actively encouraging and guiding them.
Cult had a lot going against it, starting with the fact that explaining the basic plot of the show to someone at a bar takes several minutes and a lot of air-quotes and diagrams, and even then is so complicated that by the time you're done the person you're explaining it to will most likely be totally uninterested in expending the brain power to actually watch it. And being a show on the CW, the cast basically looks like the cast of a CW show, just a little too pretty to be read as actual people, with the exception of Prison Break's Robert Knepper, who plays Grimm, and the continually great Aisha Hinds as the shady detective working to keep Jeff and Skye from discovering the nature of the True Believers.
Lost, ridiculously long and complex theories on What It All Means. It's the nature of modern fandom that we don't just passively consume entertainment anymore; we actively engage with it through remixes. Obsession has become the mainstream. The water-cooler chat about last night's episode has been supplanted by online communities of devotees who don't think it's at all weird that your life revolves around an entertainment property. And when there are people who get so deeply into TV shows and movies that they will, for instance, self-identify as giant alien cat-people, the idea of a group of diehard fans following the instructions of a fictional cult leader isn't so hard to believe.
The real-world Cult doesn't seem to have done much to inspire that kind of devotion. Its apparent cancelation hasn't caused much noise online, and a grassroots campaign to save it (another common feature of modern fandom) doesn't seem very likely. But it had some good ideas, and once you understand the metafictional setup, its central mystery is compelling enough to easily inspire some binge viewing on Hulu. As the geek-culture blog io9 suggests, there could still be a DVD set in the future, or a spot for it in the CW's summer lineup, where we could see how the rest of the season plays out. Which hopefully there will be, because as cheesy as the show could be, it managed to get its hooks in me. And I still want that answer.
Miles Raymer is a writer based in New York City who has contributed to the Chicago Reader, Vice, Pitchfork, and others.


French president Emmanuel Macron is expected this week to announce his conclusions after three months of nationwide debate aimed at placating violent protests against his reformist agenda.
As Mr Macron prepares to announce his five-point plan, protesters have taken to the streets for the 22nd consecutive weekend of mobilisation.
A rally called for by the gilet jaunes in Toulouse, the capital of France’s southern Occitan region, drew over 31,000 protesters – up from last week’s 22,300 participants.
Eight hundred policemen were deployed to the area to contain the protesters, who built barricades and attempted to push through to the city centre. Police forces responded with teargas, stun grenades and water cannons to disperse the crowd.
The government’s refusal to authorise protests in Paris did not prevent the gilets jaunes from pouring into the Champs-Elysées, the upper-class shopping quarter that has been the theatre of violent clashes.
According to the interior ministry, at least 5,000 people took to the streets of Paris despite the lack of authorisation.
Demonstrations in the Champs-Elysées have damaged shops and businesses in the area. Around 72,600 people in 5,000 companies are estimated to have been forced to work reduced work hours for reduced pay since the yellow vest protest movement started on November 17.
Rights groups including Amnesty International, however, are opposed to the law as it encroaches on freedom of speech and the right to protest. Amnesty International, Attac, UNEF, SOS Racisme and others staged a protest on Saturday to express their dissent.
Against this backdrop, Mr Macron is set to announce his plan to reconcile the nation. According to an internal source quoted by French newspaper Le Monde, the president may present his five-point plan as soon as Sunday or Monday evening.
The president’s proposal around the issue of taxation – which was the spark that ignited the protests five months ago – will be the most scrutinised.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said taxes – and how to “lower them faster” – will be at the heart of the president’s announcement.


Is This the 'Next Generation Firework Show'?
I don't know. It might work. Look at electric cars. People thought they'd be boring and now the technology has advanced to being one of the best means of transportation around. Of course this will never fly for people who like sudden loud noises.
For all you folks WHINING about replacing "real fireworks" with alternatives (drones and laser light shows), I suggest you move to any of the areas in drought then rethink that position. In Colorado, we are in a drought over much of the state - and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ACRES ARE BURNING FROM WILDFIRES. About 40 "real fireworks" shows were cancelled or replaced (out of about 120 statewide), there were a couple of drone shows and couple of laser light shows as well as "real fireworks". Guess which kind caused BRUSH FIRES (and the worst was a result of one of the "professional shows" while some smaller fires were the result of ID10TS who didn't take weather and dryness conditions into consideration). Frankly, I hope that dolts like you lose EVERYTHING EXCEPT YOUR LIVES to a fire caused by fireworks (or have a loved one go through that) since you are more than willing to have others face that.


LONDON (Reuters) - Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi had a constructive meeting with London’s transport boss on Tuesday, the company said, just days after the city refused to renew its operating license.
“Our new CEO had a constructive meeting with the Transport Commissioner this afternoon. We hope to have further discussions over the coming weeks as we are determined to make things right in London,” an Uber spokesman said.
Transport for London, the body which oversees public transport in the capital, also described the meeting as constructive.
“Today’s constructive meeting centered on what needs to happen to ensure a thriving taxi and private hire market in London where everyone operates to the same high standards. Further steps in this process will take place over the coming weeks,” a spokesman said.


Anton Yelchin's first film role came in 2000, when the actor was a mere 11 years old. Since then, he has had roles in 42 movies as well as multiple television appearances. Sadly, it's been reported that the actor has passed away at the age of 27.
Though he's starred in a number of films, Yelchin is best known for his role as Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek reboot films. He brought a sense of fun to the role while also showing off the character's intelligence, breathing life into a supporting character who was often overlooked in favor of characters like Kirk, Spock and Bones. This was part of Yelchin's magic; he was charismatic and gave viewers a reason to care about his characters.
According to Yelchin's publicist, he passed away early on the 19th after what has been referred to as a "fatal traffic collision." TMZ reported further details, claiming that he had been pinned against a brick mailbox attached to a security gate by his own car; it is suggested that he got out of the car for an unknown reason before leaving for a rehearsal, and the car rolled down the steep driveway. Police do not suspect foul play.
Born in the Soviet Union to professional figure skaters, Yelchin moved to the United States when he was only six months old after his parents secured political refugee status. Yelchin admits that he himself wasn't very good at figure skating, though he did enjoy playing music. He has stated before that playing guitar gave him "a lot of fulfillment", and he started a punk band called "The Hammerheads" to take a break from the success of his first Star Trek film.
Whenever an actor dies this young, fans are left to wonder what might have been. In some cases, we have an idea of the sorts of films that the actor might have gone on to star in because of their past body of work or their expressed interests. With Yelchin, though, there's no way to guess which direction his career might have taken him. By age 27 he had starred in blockbusters, comedies, horror, dramas, independent films... he even voiced a Smurf and narrated a documentary. In the years ahead he might have branched out into directing, or further expressed his star power in a million different ways. He was an amazing talent, and he leaves behind legions of fans to mourn his passing.
Yelchin will appear in this summer's Star Trek Beyond. Regardless of how it is received, Yelchin's performance in it will likely stand as a fitting send-off for the actor. That was perhaps one of the best things about Yelchin... he put so much into his performances, that almost any performance would have stood the test of time had it been his last.


Editor’s note: This story was originally published on July 19, 2016.
Have you ever wondered why rocks margaritas tasted more alcoholic than frozen margaritas? Or whether one had more overall ice and water than the other?
Like many restaurants in Austin, El Mercado serves margaritas both on the rocks (poured over cubes of ice) and frozen. We talked with a chemist at the University of Texas about the scientific differences between the two types of cocktails. Photo by Deborah Cannon for the Austin American-Statesman.
Kate Biberdorf let me ask her all kinds of questions about ice shape and size, ethanol and heat, and her answers are in this story that is running in tomorrow’s paper.
You’ll note that the rocks margarita has double the alcohol per serving. If you poured that much booze into a frozen margarita, all the ice crystals would melt even faster than they already do.
For more nerdy stuff like that, check out the main story.
For the recipes, from Austin’s David Alan and Joe Eiffler, authors of “Tipsy Texan” (Andrew McMeel, $19.99), scroll on down and get to shakin’ or blendin’.
To make simple syrup, add 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup water to a saucepan. Heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved, then cool. If you don’t have a cocktail jigger, there are about two tablespoons in a fluid ounce.
Combine the tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice and simple syrup in a blender cup and fill with ice until the ice is just covered by the liquid. Blend thoroughly (it may be necessary to add a little bit more ice to achieve the desired slushiness). Pour into a goblet, rimmed with coarse salt if you like, and garnish with a lime wedge. Serves 2.
Combine the tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice and simple syrup with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously with the ice to properly chill and emulsify the ingredients. Strain into a salt-rimmed, chilled cocktail glass or onto fresh ice in a rocks glass or footed goblet. Garnish with the lime wedge. Serves 1.


It's crunch time for England as they take on a confident Ukraine side in a must-not-lose World Cup qualifier on Tuesday night.
Following Friday's results, Mykhaylo Fomenko's team have suddenly emerged as England's prinicpal challengers in Group H, an impression that will only be enhanced if they win at the Olympic Stadium.
Never an easy team to beat anyway, the mood in Ukraine at the moment is bullish, with the public, pundits and ex-pros united in praise for a technically-gifted and hard-working team.
Sportsmail's Jamie Redknapp revealed in his column last week that he had enjoyed a round of golf with perhaps the most famous Ukrainian export, Andriy Shevchenko.
'The former Chelsea and Milan striker says they will be more than a match for England in Kiev and that doesn't make me feel comfortable,' Redknapp wrote.
But what should we expect from the Ukraine team and how frightened should we be?
Pyatov took over the keeping duties when veteran Oleksandr Shovkovskiy retired from international duties last year and is firmly established as his country's number one despite rotating the duties with Anton Kanibolotsky for club Shakhtar Donetsk.
The 29-year-old has played in every qualifying match so far and helped keep England at bay during the 1-1 draw at Wembley last September.
He also saved a penalty from Stevan Jovetic in the 1-0 home defeat to Montenegro in October.
Regular followers of the Champions League may remember Pyatov's performances for Shakhtar as they reached the last 16 in 2012-2013, a run that included a 2-1 home win over Chelsea in the group stages.
And he'll be returning to these shores again soon as Shakhtar have been paired with Manchester United in this year's group stage.
One of the many scorers for Ukraine as they thrashed San Marino 9-0 on Friday night, right-back Fedetskiy will hope for similar gains against England by pushing on in support of Tymoshchuk and Konoplyanka.
He plays for Dnipro, who are managed by former Tottenham boss Juande Ramos and currently lie third in the Ukrainian Premier League, and has occasionally been deployed in a more advanced right-wing role.
Fedetskiy didn't receive a great deal of first team football after moving to Shakhtar Donetsk from FC Kharkiv in 2008, but he flourished during three seasons on loan at Karpaty Lviv and has subsequently won 24 caps for his country.
Ukraine's centre-back colossus Khacheridi - who stands at 6ft 6in - will cause a real headache for Gary Cahill and Phil Jagielka at corners and set-pieces.
The 26-year-old Dynamo Kiev man scored twice against San Marino on Friday and also set up the second goal for Yevhen Seleznyov.
England will have to watch Khacheridi closely. He has a habit of dropping off and then attacking the back post where he can use his height and heading ability to devastating effect.
He is unlikely to get forward nearly as much as he did on Friday, however, in what will be a very cautious game.
It was his handball that gave Frank Lampard the opportunity to equalise from the penalty spot in the return game at Wembley.
The elegant centre-half Rakitskiy compliments his much taller partner Khacheridi at the heart of the Ukraine defence and will be tasked with keeping a tight rein on Rickie Lambert.
He made his debut against England as a 20-year-old back in October 2009, a match Ukraine won 1-0 with Fabio Capello's side already assured of their World Cup place.
Despite his young age, Rakitskiy has experienced great success with club Shakhtar, winning four league titles, three Ukrainian Cups and enjoying regular appearances in the Champions League.
Shevchuk has not played as much football as you might expect from a 34-year-old, having been a back-up to Romanian Razvan Rat at Shakhtar for many years.
But the left-back, now first choice for club and country, has started to develop a more attacking edge to his game.
Having been at Shakhtar since 2005, Shevchuk has enjoyed great success, notably five league titles, three Cups and the UEFA Cup when his club beat Werder Bremen 2-1 in the 2009 final.
Since the retirement of Shevchenko, Tymoshchuk is Ukraine's most famous and recognisable player, something that isn't difficult with his flowing blond hair and trademark headband.
The 34-year-old skipper is usually deployed in a deep-lying midfield role to protect his back four, though he was able to enjoy a more forward-thinking role against San Marino and supplied long balls for the first two goals.
He will be back marshalling the midfield against England and has already fired a few opening salvoes.
A veteran of 130 caps, Tymoshchuk returned to Zenit in the summer following four trophy-laden seasons with Bayern Munich.
The Treble of Bundesliga, German Cup and Champions League was certainly the perfect way to say farewell to the Bavarian side.
Central midfield schemer who has been a familiar fixture in the Ukraine team for a decade.
He helped create the memorable goal scored by Konoplyanka in the 1-1 Wembley draw last year and will aim to seize control of the midfield against Gerrard and Lampard, as well as creating supply lines to Konoplyanka and Yarmolenko.
Rotan plays for Dnipro also and will figure in the Europa League this season after the club ended up fourth in the Premier League last season.
Just one of the many Brazilian-born players to come over and play in Ukraine, Edmar has received belated international recognition following his performances for title challengers Metalist.
Edmar qualifies for the national team having lived in the country for so long - he moved from Internacional to Crimean side Tavriya Simferopol back in 2002.
He has so far featured in two of the qualifiers and scored his maiden goal for Ukraine against San Marino on Friday night.
Roy Hodgson should not need to remind his players of the threat posed by Konoplyanka, the man who scored a brilliant goal at Wembley a year ago.
A right-footed winger who usually plays on the left, he will try to cut inside and shoot on his stronger foot.
Kyle Walker will have an important role to play in forcing the Dnipro man outside, while it may be prudent to have Gerrard or Lampard as cover.
Konoplyanka, who was linked with a move to Liverpool in the summer, also takes the majority of Ukraine's set-pieces.
He was understandably in his element on Friday night as he carved through the San Marino defence at will, scoring the sixth goal.
But he said afterwards that Ukraine would have preferred a sterner examination ahead of the clash with England.
'From San Marino to England in four days is a big jump in class — it can be difficult to adjust,' he said.
While Konoplyanka cuts in from the left, Yarmolenko will be trying to do the exact same on the right.
The Dynamo Kiev player will off a danger on the counter-attack, though his reliance on his left foot can prove a source of frustration.
Yarmolenko also likes a step-over, so Ashley Cole has been warned not to dive in, but he can be guilty of losing concentration.
Still, his international scoring record is fairly good, averaging a goal every three matches.
Just 23, a move from Dynamo to a bigger European club is surely on the cards soon.
Devic was the man whose shot clearly crossed the line before John Terry cleared during that tense Euro 2012 match last year, denying the hosts a place in the knockout stages.
It would have boosted the player's rather paltry goalscoring record at international level - just three in 31 appearances.
His record for club Metalist can't be disputed, however, where he has 85 in 206 games over two spells.


What are the lessons we can draw from the removal of leavened foods, and the bland crackers we eat for a full week?
Sometimes those challenging moments, when we feel that we have been flattened and held against the ropes, are the very moments that make us stronger, better and crunchier.
There are other components to the human diet, and technically we can subsist on other foods. But there is something about bread which marks it as the quintessential food, and as the metaphor for all that nourishes our existence.
Jews are strictly forbidden to eat any leavened foods on Passover. Bread is replaced by Matzah – flat baked wafers made only of flour and water. Jews all over the world, take scrupulous care to avoid eating even the smallest particle of Chametz.
The relationship, from its very inception, has been plagued by a quarrel between the spouses. As is common with many couples, they find themselves continuously and constantly arguing the same argument.
It contains no oil or honey, nuts or fruit, not even a coating of egg and poppy seeds . . . How did this “bread of poverty” wangle center stage in the festival celebrating our acquisition of the greatest of wealths—our freedom?
So, they happened to eat matzah because they were in a rush. So what? I thought that Passover is about freedom, not food!
Chametz: What Would Your Psychologist Say?
Why the big fuss? Torah prohibits many items at various times, but-- thankfully!--we are not obligated to embark on an all-out assault against every banned item.
If chametz is so intolerable, why do we eat it all year round? And what is the significance of the unexpected appearance of “wet matzah” on the eighth day of Passover?
Aha, I Found the Cheerio!


What's More Important: Your Product Or Proof-Of-Concept?
I have had the luxury of meeting over 500 startups at Red Rocket Ventures over the last three years. And, typically, most of them approach me at the same point in their startup development. They have just finished building their new product, whether it be a website or mobile app or whatever, and they are seeking venture capital to assist them with sales and marketing to bring in new users. It is typically then, when I ask them "do you have any current users and how quickly are you growing" to point to a proof-of-concept around your startup. Which is typically followed by, "I don't have a material user base yet, that is why I need the venture capital". Then I shrug, and have to be the "bad guy" of telling them they are not ready to raise professional venture capital. A sad and familiar story, as without this round of capital, the startup will most likely go out of business, as they lack other sources.
But, why is this the same old story? In my opinion, it is because entrepreneurs are so focused on their product, with their heads down coding away on some cool technology feature or functionality, that they don't think far enough ahead to what will keep their business funded. Yes, many product-driven disciples will say, "if you build a great product, users will come". And, they are right. But, the question is: by when?
Startups are on a very short timeline to success, typically raising a small amount of seed capital from friends and family or angel investors. And, because these investors are not typically flush with cash, the entrepreneur simply raises enough money to build and launch their product. It was in that fatal decision, in my opinion, where most startups have placed the noose around their necks without even knowing it.
Before even investing one penny in their product, they should have set a budget for their product AND their proof-of-concept marketing. Because without some dollars to seed users for your product from Google, Facebook or other targeted and affordable advertising channels, it will be very difficult to build and grow an audience large enough that will satisfy the proof-of-concept requirements of most venture capitalists.
Never lose sight of the forest through the trees. Make sure you are clear on the end goal of building a successful long term business, which may require capital down the road. And, learn the requirements of those investors, right from the start.
From day one of your startup, set aside a proof-of-concept marketing budget with which to drive initial users to your product.
Proof-of-concept is typically dictated by the quantity of users you have attracted, and how quickly you are growing month-over-month. So, raise enough marketing dollars to build a large enough initial user base (e.g., 100,000 app downloads), doubling in size month over month.
And, most investors will want to learn your marketing metrics around a profitable cost of acquisition per user. So, you can't just waste your marketing budget, you have to test and tinker with it until you find the profitable relationship between marketing spend and revenues per user.
If you don't raise this money upfront, it will be near impossible to raise it later, given the proof-of-concept requirement of the venture investors.
If you proceed in raising enough capital for your product only, you are walking down a very slippery slope towards startup failure, before you even had a reasonable chance for success. This is the reason 9 in 10 startups fail: they didn't plan far enough ahead, because they didn't know any better.
No surprises here, you can probably guess where I am heading. In my opinion, proof-of-concept is materially more important than the product for any startups desiring to raise venture capital down the road. As without it, there will be no capital to save your business from running over the cliff. Look at CraigsList and Wikipedia as examples: they aren't very pretty sites, but they were functional enough to attract a huge user base.
So, everyone stop what you are doing with your products, take some time to understand what will be required of you from a proof-of-concept perspective with new investors down the road, and align all of your immediate efforts around those clearly defined goals and metrics. To help you here, check out my Red Rocket post on how to budget and test your proof-of-concept marketing.
George Deeb is a Partner at Red Rocket Ventures and author of 101 Startup Lessons-An Entrepreneur's Handbook. For future posts from George, please follow him here or on Twitter at @georgedeeb or @redrocketvc.


Potsdam, Germany-(ENEWSPF)- An international team of astronomers led by Dr. Andrea Kunder of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) in Germany and Dr. R. Michael Rich of UCLA has discovered that the central 2000 light years within the Milky Way Galaxy hosts an ancient population of stars. These stars are more than 10 billion years old and their orbits in space preserve the early history of the formation of the Milky Way.
For the first time the team kinematically disentangled this ancient component from the stellar population that currently dominates the mass of the central Galaxy. The astronomers used the AAOmega spectrograph on the Anglo Australian Telescope near Siding Spring, Australia, and focussed on a well-known and ancient class of stars, called RR Lyrae variables. These stars pulsate in brightness roughly once a day, which make them more challenging to study than their static counterparts, but they have the advantage of being “standard candles”. RR Lyrae stars allow exact distance estimations and are found only in stellar populations more than 10 billion years old, for example, in ancient halo globular clusters. The velocities of hundreds of stars were simultaneously recorded toward the constellation of Sagittarius over an area of the sky larger than the full moon. The team therefore was able to use the age stamp on the stars to explore the conditions in the central part of our Milky Way when it was formed.
The RR Lyrae stars are moving targets – their pulsations result in changes in their apparent velocity over the course of a day. The team accounted for this, and was able to show that the velocity dispersion or random motion of the RR Lyrae star population was very high relative to the other stars in the Milky Way’s center. The next steps will be to measure the exact metal content of the RR Lyrae population, which gives additional clues to the history of the stars, and enhance by three or four times the number of stars studied, that presently stands at almost 1000.


The daughters of boxing legend Muhammad Ali, Maryum and Hanna, say "he's not in pain" and has "never been on his death bed".
Recent rumours claimed Ali, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, was unable to speak, but his daughters dismiss this and say he is "doing well".
Ali became the first boxer in history to win the heavyweight world title three times.
Ali's daughters are in London with director Clare Lewins to promote the British release of the documentary "I am Ali".


Mike Tyson is historically attributed the observation along the lines of ‘everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’.
A thought of this nature may have occurred to one or two home spectators on Saturday during East Kilbride Rugby Club’s rout of Cambuslang at Coats Park.
When the sides met at Torrance House on the season’s opening day, a missed conversion with the last play of the game cost Cambus victory, and they must have fair fancied their barra with home advantage.
Unfortunately for optimistic home supporters, and despite a heavyweight scrum putting significant pressure on their visitors, EK were a class above, running in ten tries in a dominant performance.
Coach Allan Steel was able to put out a strong side despite the absence of key tight forwards Eddie Beaton and Ally Dalgleish.
There was a return to starting colours for Evan Middleton at the base of the scrum while Scott Aitken took a place on the bench, having been out for over a year.
Losing the heft of Beaton and Dalgleish increased the pressure on the EK forwards but they stuck to their set-piece tasks well. Once the ball was on the move though there was only one winner, EK playing some sublime running rugby.
Cambus had no answer to the power of Rosie, Shankie and Greenfield, in particular, while Chris O’Neill and the younger Beaton, two of the most mobile back-row players in the division, were dominant around the tackle area.
For the record, the East Kilbride tries were spread across Rosie (2), Brown (2), Mclellan, Middleton, Greenfield, Aitken, Stott and Shankie, with the latter adding 20 points with the boot.
EK gaffer Steel said: “We were relentless.
“The boys kept going back for more and that’s what we’ve been asking them to do.
“We don’t want them to be happy with what they’ve got, they need to go and finish games off and that’s exactly what they did.
“Cambuslang gave us a really hard game earlier in the season, so we knew we had to be well up for it.
“And we were better than Cambuslang all over the park. It’s the best rugby I’ve seen us play in a while.
The win sees EK move back up to second in the table, three points behind Allan Glens and just ahead of Garnock and Greenock.
All four remain serious contenders for the single promotion place to the National Leagues.
This Saturday EK host a Stewartry side who put over 100 points on Strathendrick at the weekend. Despite this EK will go into the match with a degree of confidence, having already comfortably turned Stewartry over in Castle Douglas back in September.
Steel added: “If we don’t prepare properly for a game, any team is capable of beating us in this league.
“We don’t want an Irvine situation like we had a few weeks ago, a few guys being well off the pace and we get beat.
“Stewartry scored 120 points at the weekend, so it will be a difficult game.
TEAM: 1. McLellan, 2. Anderson, 3. McLinton, 4. Irvine, 5. Rosie, 6. O’Neill, 7. R. Beaton, 8. Middleton, 9. Ellison, 10. Murray, 11. Stewart, 12. Shankie, 13. Stott, 14. L. Brown, 15. Greenfield. Replacements: Blackwood, Fletcher, S. Aitken and Dryburgh.


Two homegrown musicals symbolize opposite ends of theater here. Andrew Lloyd Webber - the world's most bankable composer - has opened "The Woman in White," drawn from a novel of Victorian morality. By contrast, the most talked-about production, "Jerry Springer - The Opera," offers up a gleefully amoral celebration of tell-all television.
London has played host to Webber extravanganzas for more than 30 years, with "The Phantom of the Opera" running since 1986. Sir Andrew has not produced a mega success for more than a decade, and many fans were eagerly awaiting "Woman," which revisits the formula that made most of his previous musicals such commercial hits.
"Jerry Springer - The Opera" abandons any formula, reveling instead in the fictitious "guests" on Springer's show who can't wait to air their salacious tales of infidelity, scatological habits, and blasphemous jokes. The musical - with its lyrics laced with four-letter words - has also drawn younger audiences who would never buy tickets to "Phantom."
The "Jerry Springer" production grew from a series of workshops in 2001 into a solid West End hit, winning loads of awards. It is being considered for a US production next year.
"The Woman in White" sprang more conventionally from Webber's pen. The plot is drawn from a 19th-century Wilkie Collins novel. Its suspense-filled story follows the plight of an innocent but wealthy orphan, pursued by a villain who is after her money. There's no ambiguity about the rewards of being good and the dangerous portents of evil. The villain comes to a well-deserved unhappy end while the heroine gets the hero who has rescued her - fortune intact.
Act II takes place in Purgatory, after Springer is shot by a disgruntled minion. The third act is set in Hell, populated by a charismatic Satan, who is visited by characters from the Bible - including God, who descends from on high, singing "It ain't easy being Me."
The production numbers include a tap-dancing chorus of hooded Ku Klux Klan members, and echoes of classic musicals such as "42nd Street" and the "Ziegfeld Follies." The show's theme, voiced in the lyrics, "Society has an ugly face/ Jerry didn't make it so/ he merely holds a mirror to it," while distressing, may hold a ring of truth. Moral conventions are not so much challenged as ignored, leaving few people unoffended.
With "The Woman in White," adapted for the stage by Charlotte Jones, Webber returns to the past. Part of the appeal lies in the presentation of spectacle, with innovative scenery and elaborate costumes. "Woman" takes its gorgeous display of stagecraft from the world of technology. The scenic design by William Dudley is a totally projected series of verdant country landscapes, alternating with views of a proper English manor in all its mahogany-panelled splendor. The stage is empty of anything three-dimensional, leaving a rear cyclorama filled with moving pictures and a circular stage floor that revolves the characters into each new scene.
Webber's score, with lyrics by David Zippel, has produced one major song, "I Believe My Heart," that hit the No. 2 spot on the British singles chart. Like "Jerry," it is slated for transfer to the US.
"Jerry Springer - The Opera" is not for the faint of stomach. Its foray into the profane makes the Broadway musical "Urinetown" look like "The Teddy Bears' Picnic." That said, however, it's worth remarking on the amount of imagination that fuels the enterprise. And producers can't help noticing that "Jerry Springer" attracts those coveted younger audiences.
"Jerry" also walked off with four major British awards for best musical - the 2003 Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards, and the 2004 Olivier and What's On Stage Awards.


Soquel High traveled to Monte Vista Christian School for their nonleague game Monday afternoon in Watsonville. Results were not immediately available. MVC begins play in the Pacific Coast Athletic League’s Cypress Division on March 13 at Stevenson. Soquel starts SCCAL play March 19 vs. Harbor.


Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda has directed hospitals treating victims of last Friday’s explosion in Bayan-Gari in Bauchi metropolis to send the bill to the government.
He sympathised with the injured and condoled with the families of the dead.
Yuguda gave the directive when he visited hospitals, where the injured are receiving treatment.
He was accompanied by the Commissioner for Health, Sani Mallami. The governor instructed the commissioner ’’to ensure that the victims receive adequate treatment’’.
Yuguda directed that ‘’those who need to be referred to other hospitals outside the state be taken out to enable them get better treatment’’.


Does your primary PC or laptop run off an HDD or SSD?
my primary PC has an SSD.
enough RAM and an SSD are the starting points of any build.
Took a while, but I am running close to 100% on SSD as a primary drive on all my machines. Laptop came preconfigured with SSD and everything else but my FreeNAS server is now running off some sort of SSD. Technically the FreeNAS runs off a USB stick, but all the drives are spinning platters.
Spinning drive for everything. I would like a SSD though.
It's a must for games. It's not just loading times for the OS, everything loads faster from disk to memory.
120 gb SSD with HDD external for large storage. Benefit of speed and space. 120gb SSD now floating around the net for around R 600. Well worth it for the performance boost.
SSD is the way to go. Running a nice Samsung 960 Evo in my primary laptop, with a 1tb HDD secondary drive, and work upgraded us all the SSDs about a year ago.
SSD for the operating system plus HDD in one machine and HDD only in the other.
Your avatar is ****ed up.


Following a weekend of uncertainty, frantic negotiations and enough finger pointing and partisan recriminations to last us through the middle of the century, the U.S. Senate on Monday voted 81-18 to approve a temporary funding measure, ending the government shutdown, which began at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
The House of Representatives quickly followed suit, and President Donald Trump signed the bill into law later the same day.
The temporary measure — which will fund the federal government through Feb. 8 — was the result of a Senate compromise. By terms of the compromise, Democrats agreed to back the three-week extension in exchange for assurances from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he will use that extra three weeks to negotiate an agreement securing the future of the so-called “dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and whose fate was the source of much of the disagreement that led to the shutdown in the first place.
While I’m happy Congress troubled itself to hammer out a solution and get the government running again, I still have to ask: What changed so drastically between late Friday night, when lawmakers couldn’t seem to agree on anything, and Monday evening, when the obvious solution passed the Senate by an overwhelming majority?
I’ll tell you what changed: Nothing did.
The Senate could just as easily have passed the temporary measure Friday night and spared thousands of federal workers and military personnel the unimaginable stress of wondering when they might be allowed to return to work, when they might expect another paycheck, when they might again have the means to partake in the luxuries of life — you know, things like food on one’s the table and a roof over one’s head.
If it sounds like I’m angry, it’s because I am. The shutdown was nothing more than a political stunt, calculated and carried out by members of both parties to make members of the opposing party look bad.
Democrats dubbed this weekend’s impasse as “The Trump Shutdown,” referring, of course, to President Trump, while Republicans insisted a better name would be “The Schumer Shutdown,” referring, of course, to Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, Senate minority leader.
In fact, it was neither. What it was is a bunch of grown men and women behaving like children — refusing to even talk about funding the government until they’d secured everything they wanted as preconditions.
Even after the deal had been negotiated, voted on and signed by the president, some members of Congress were still openly hostile toward the arrangement.
Three other U.S. senators —Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand — joined Harris in casting the 18 Senate “no” votes.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, also of California, added that she, too, was “disappointed” with the deal.
Here’s my problem with the whole thing: It should never have come down to a “deal” in the first place. Funding the government is not about securing DACA, nor is it about winning support for a border wall. It’s about funding essential services, and that’s what Congress flatly refused to do for almost three days.
By the Constitution of the United States, it is the responsibility of Congress to appropriate the funds necessary to operate the government. Period. When its members refuse to carry out that responsibility, they’re refusing to do the job we pay them — quite handsomely, by the way — to do, and they’re breaking the trust we placed in them when we voted them into office in the first place.
I don’t know about you, but if I were to refuse to perform the duties required by my job, I wouldn’t have a job for very long, and I, for one, will remember that fact when it’s time to cast another vote.
Jim Patterson is editor of the Craig Press. Contact him at 970-875-1790 or jpatterson@CraigDailyPress.com.


The Amici Singers and the Ensemble of Friends held a Remembrance Day concert at St Mary’s Church, Potton, in commemoration of the end of the First World War, presented by Douglas Coombes MBE.
The programme included war poems read by Rev Gill Smith and choir members and a selection of well-known music from the era.
The highlight was a suite of music by Douglas Coombes called Anthems for Doomed Youth, which included a piece written to the poem Anthem for Doomed Youth by the poet Wilfred Owen, accompanied on the trumpet by Thomas Fountain, who also played the Elegy from Anthems for Doomed Youth, with Trevor Hughes.
At the end of the final movement, The Last Post was played by Thomas Fountain.
Movingly, Rev Gill Smith read out the names of all the young soldiers from Potton while the choirs softly hummed Deep Peace.
Four flag bearers from local uniformed groups lowered the flags during the singing and raised them again during the last hymn.
The retiring collection raised over £500 for Help For Heroes, and after the concert refreshments were served in the Village Community Centre.


The star of the South African movies Spud and Spud: The Madness Continues, Troye Sivan, has told the world in a YouTube video he’s gay.
The star of the South African movies Spud and Spud: The Madness Continues, Troye Sivan (18), has told the world in a YouTube video he’s gay.
“I’ve never been so nervous in my life,” Troyes says in the video. “It feels strange announcing [it] on the internet like this, but . . . it’s something I’m not ashamed of, and no one has to be ashamed of it, so why can’t I share it with all of you?” Troye’s YouTube channel, where the video appeared last week, has more than half a million subscribers.
The Spud star’s fans showed their support on his Facebook page. Hundreds of people congratulated him and said they were proud of his decision to come out. More than 760 000 people have viewed the video, which was downloaded to YouTube on 7 August.
In the video Troye says he told his family he was gay on 7 August 2010, that’s why he chose the same date to announce it to the world this year. He says his family and friends have been supportive of the fact he’s gay from the beginning and it’s brought them closer together.
Troye was born in South Africa but emigrated to Australia with his parents when he was two.


Can A 6th Gear Fix The 2014 Honda CB1100?
Here's the world-first review of the 2014 Honda CB1100 Deluxe. Not because we tried all that hard to scoop it, but because everyone else really is just that lazy.
Full Disclosure: Honda wanted me to ride the new CB1100 so bad, they agreed to let me borrow it after I phoned up and asked politely.
I love the CB1100. Its smooth character, handsome looks and surprising performance just combine to create a modest, but capable motorcycle that has all the charm of a classic bike and all the speed, handling and convenience of a modern one.
How's that for a good-looking motorcycle, eh?
For 2014, it's switched from a 5- to a 6-speed gearbox and this new Deluxe model gains half a gallon of fuel capacity, a 4-into-2 exhaust and a quilt-pattern seat. ABS used to be a cost option, but is now standard on the $11,899 Deluxe model. Oddly, it's no longer an option on the standard, $10,399 bike.
This year, the standard CB1100 is only available in black, while the Deluxe only comes in burgundy, with silver pin stripes. Both models benefit from the new transmission.
I said "fix" in the headline, so what was wrong? Well, the CB1100 is just sort of an odd bike. Riding it, you get the feeling that an older Honda executive in Japan came up with his dream bike, then forced it through to production with no compromises. High quality suspension, a bespoke motor created just for this bike, deep chrome fenders and just a general no compromises approach throughout — the brake calipers are the same used on the firm's superbikes just a few years ago — does not lead to a low price point and the CB1100 is thousands of dollars more expensive than any rival.
A price gap it doesn't really justify with performance. It may carry 276cc and two more cylinders than a Triumph Bonneville, but at a 87bhp and 540lbs (standard model), it's no faster than the 496lbs, 68bhp, $7,899 Bonnie.
The addition of a 6th gear — something the Triumph doesn't have — does do a little to improve performance. While Honda hasn't released the ratios inside the new gearbox, we can count a one tooth larger rear sprocket, shortening the final drive ratio for incrementally improved acceleration. And, while 6th is noticeably taller than 5th on the previous model, it's not just an overdrive ratio and you can achieve meaningful acceleration in it.
It does noticeably drop RPMs at highway speeds though. Where the old CB1100 was unsettled at 80mph, this new bike cruises at 90 in a smooth, unflustered fashion.
The clocks continue the classic good looks with modern function theme. The two green-faced analog dials bookend a digital display complete with a now-accurate fuel gauge, gear position indicator, clock and trip meter.
Fuelly reports that CB1100 owners average 46mpg. With the new 4.6 gallon tank (created by adding a little height), the CB1100's range grows from 180 to a more useful 210 miles.
With quality damping and brake components combined with a low center of gravity and long wheelbase, the CB1100 has always been a strong braker. The Deluxe model's ABS adds to that, giving you even more confidence during emergency stops.
The 4-into-2 exhaust was added over the standard model's 4-2-1 arrangement purely for aesthetic reasons and brings no power benefits. That's disappointing, because it does add weight. Combined with the added fuel capacity, weight grows from 540 on the base model to a positively portly 570.9lbs for the Deluxe, both measured with full fuel tanks.
This isn't a bike that's about performance specs though, it's about giving you an evocative, capable, fun package. And, at that, the CB1100 still excels. The air and oil-cooled motor ticks and pings as you walk away from it after a ride, reminding you of all the smiles as it sure-footedly picked its way through traffic, down a canyon or now, even on a long highway.


Nayeem was also involved in over 20 murders, dozens of extortions and attacks.
Hyderabad: An ex-member of CPI (M-L) People's War Group (PWG), 45-year-old Nayeemuddin aka Nayeem aka Balanna was an accused in the murder of IPS officer N.S. Vyas who had founded the Greyhounds. Nayeem was also involved in over 20 murders, dozens of extortions and attacks.
Nayeem was on the radar of TS police in connection with the murder of TRS leader K. Ramulu, who was shot by him in 2014, and the recent extortion case filed by realtor Kurapati Gangadhar in Nizamabad. Nayeem had surrendered to the police and faced the trial. However, in March 2007, he escaped while appearing before court. He reportedly told the police that he wanted to go and answer nature’s call and disappeared. Since then, he has been one of the most wanted fugitives in the state.
Hailing from Bhongir in Nalgonda district, Nayeemuddin was the student leader of a leftist party while studying in Bhongir Degree College in 1990. He later joined the Radical Student Union (RSU) of CPI ML (PWG) and was made the organiser of RSU Bhongir town in 1991. Some time later, he was arrested by the Yadagirgutta police, which siezed a tapancha and a grenade from him. After his release from jail, he again went underground and joined the Aleru Dalam of CPI ML (PWG) as a member with the alias Balanna.
Nayeem became the most-wanted criminal after his name popped up in the murder of N.S. Vyas, at the L.B. Stadium in the city in 1993. He was arrested on 12 February 1993 with a .32 revolver. He was released on bail in May 2000, but arrested again in November for killing Karanam Purushotham, an APCLC member at Madhuranagar.
The anti-Naxal force Greyhounds avenged the killing of its founder K.S. Vyas by killing Nayeem. Many suspect the Greyhounds pulled off the encounter after getting the nod from the ministry.
The revenge came after 23 years. Nayeem was one of the suspects involved in the Vyas murder case of 1993. Though he was arrested in that case he secured bail and came out. Many men and officers of Greyhounds were waiting for a chance to hit Nayeemuddin, who had a lot of influence in the government and in the police.


This Is What It's Like To Be A Syrian Refugee Child In Lebanon.
I asked 12 young aspiring journalists who have fled the war in Syria three different questions about what their life is like now. They were given pen, paper and a camera. These are their answers: in their own words, as seen through their own eyes. Warning: May restore faith in humanity.
What makes you feel safe?
What do you hate most about camp life?
"There are two problems here: the garbage and sewage. They are everywhere and they cause diseases, and not just in humans. With awareness and collaboration, we will solve these two problems." Zohour Haidar, 13.
What do you think people don't know about life in the camp?
Waad and his 11 classmates are all part of a Youth Press Club run by local NGO Beyond Association that is funded by UNICEF Lebanon. The Press Club gives young Syrian refugees from informal tented settlements in the Zahle area of Lebanon a chance to talk about the daily issues they face while learning valuable photography and writing skills. To find out how else UNICEF Lebanon is helping children in Lebanon, click here.


"Handling Temper Tantrums and Sibling Rivalry" - 6:30-8 p.m. Family Guidance & Outreach Center, No. 5 Briercroft Office Park. No child care. Call to register. 747-5577.
South Plains Woodturners Meeting - 10 a.m. Target Sheet Metal, 315 S. Loop 289. Mike Oglesby will demonstrate the Raffin Lidded Box. David Hoehns, 798-2346.


Google is drawing the curtains on 32-bit only apps from 1 August 2019, as new applications or updates to existing applications that do not support 64-bit processors will not be allowed on the Play Store from that date.
It’s important to make the distinction here that 32-bit versions of apps will still be available, but they must also have a 64-bit version to accompany them. Google is steadily moving towards a model where Android devices will only support 64-bit code in the next couple of years – rather than attempting to directly stop 32-bit app production, Google is depreciating their value and incentivising developers to focus on 64-bit programs instead.
There is an exception to this rule regarding games developed using Unity 5.6 or older, which will still be able to receive 32-bit updates all the way up to August 2021. You will also still be able to download older versions of 32-bit applications if you so wish.
The timeline above shows Google’s plans regarding its movement towards a 64-bit only future, in August of 2021 users with 64-bit capable devices simply won’t be able to see 32-bit applications on the Play Store at all.
The original announcement for these plans was made back at the end of 2017 on the Android developer blog.
How can I tell if my phone is 32-bit or 64-bit? The answer to whether your device is 32 or 64-bit comes down to your phone’s processor. The more modern your processor the more likely it will have 64-bit functionality.


The days of spending 20 minutes tapping out a five-word message are over. Meet the Xbox Chatpad.
If you had an Xbox 360 Chatpad, the Xbox One version is basically an evolution of that. It's a pint-sized keyboard that attaches to the bottom of your Xbox One controller, filling out the space between the handgrips on the left and right sides of the controller.
The Chatpad features a stereo headset jack just like its Xbox 360 predecessor, but it also includes audio controls (volume and mute) and a pair of programmable buttons. You can use these to automate commands that might other require Kinect voice commands or multiple button presses, like DVR and screenshot capture.
It's not out until November, but you can pre-order one soon.


LOVE Island star, Hannah Elizabeth, has debuted a dramatic new hairstyle.
Love Island star, Hannah Elizabeth has wowed fans with a dramatic new look.
The 2015 contestant, and The Only Way Is Essex star Jon Clark's ex fiancee, changed her trademark bouncy blow-dry for a sleeker look, and shared the results with her 320k fans on Instagram.
Posting a shot from Chloe's Beauty Bar – run by Jon's ex, Chloe Sims – the star of the popular TV show pouted and stared into the distance as she showed off her new look.
Her bleached blonde tresses were styled in a straight blunt cut which was styled in a chic middle parting and swept out her face.
And while the Love Island beauty's hair looked natural, she confessed in the caption that she was actually wearing a wig.
"New wig by the Amazing talented Hair king that is @joel_mag21," she wrote.
"Thank you @millionaire_hair_extensions for the fab hair @chloesbeautybaressex #platinum#blonde #wig".
And fans couldn't believe how different she looked in the snap.
"I cant even deal with this," one follower wrote alongside two fire emojis, while another wrote: "Love the hair x."
A third fan tagged their friend and added: "Look how different she looks from love island !!"
Hannah is most famous for her relationship with TOWIE star Jon, after he popped the question on the ITV show after just weeks of knowing her.
But the model is now engaged to a new man named George Andreetti, and appears to have left her Love Island beau behind her.


America's political history has been written in the fierce narrative of war -- not only our country's many military clashes with foreign nations, but also our own unending war for democracy in the U.S.
Generation after generation of moneyed elites have persisted in trying to take wealth and power from the workaday majority and concentrate both of those things in their wealthy hands to establish a de facto American aristocracy. Every time, the people have rebelled in organized mass struggles against the monopolist and financial royalists -- literally battling for a little more economic fairness, social justice, and equal opportunity. And now, the time of rebellion is upon us again, for We the People are suddenly in the grip of a brutish level of monopolistic power.
Corporate concentration of markets, profits, workplace decision-making, political influence and our nation's total wealth is surpassing that of the infamous era of robber barons. Apple, which just became the first U.S. corporation to reach a stock value of a trillion dollars, is now larger than Bank of America, Boeing, Disney, Ford, Volkswagon and 20 other brand-name giants combined. Just five tech superpowers -- Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix -- have raked in half of this year's stock price gains by the 500 top corporations ranked by the S&P index. A recent gold rush of corporate mergers has created mega-firms and shriveled competition in most industries, including airlines, banks, drug companies, food, hospitals, hotels, law firms, media, oil and more.
The results of fewer and bigger corporations is that those few attain overwhelming power over the rest of us. They are able to control workers' pay, crush unions, jack up prices, squeeze our smaller businesses, dominate elections, weaken environmental projections... and become even fewer, bigger and more powerful. Thus, they are waging all-out corporate class war on American people, and on our democratic ideals, and they're winning.
These monopolies are not merely un-American, they're virulently anti-American, suppressing our fundamental values of fairness and opportunity for all. That's why, throughout our history, the people have instinctively rebelled at the arrogant assertions of monopoly avarice -- the Boston Tea Party, the Populist Movement, the rise of unions, Teddy Roosevelt's trustbusters, the Progressive Party, the muckrakers, the New Deal, Ralph Nader and on and on. Yet, in the stunningly short period of the last couple of decades, corporate political money and the public officials it bought have enshrined monopoly power as a legitimate form of business in our land, aggressively protected from public "meddling" by lawmakers, regulators and judges. For example, after our grassroots economy was crushed in 2007 by the greed of too-big-to-fail Wall Street banksters, officials bailed out the villainous banks at the taxpayer expense and deliberately made them bigger, more powerful and more dangerous than ever. Today, just five banks control nearly half of all financial assets in the U.S.
You'd think such a massive power grab by bank monopolists would produce an equally massive, 24/7 barrage of coverage by the nation's multitude of media outlets, which purport to be our defenders of democracy. And sure, an occasional story pops out here or there about monopoly abuse, but nothing comprehensive and cohesive to rally a public rebellion against what's become the United States of Monopoly Rule.
Why? Look at who owns America's mass media. Three decades ago, 50 large media conglomerates controlled 90 percent of the media. This year, after yet another merger of giants is completed, just five mega-media monopolists will control 90 percent of what we see, hear and read. It is not in their interest to inform the public about the threat that monopolies pose to our democracy.
As a paragon of journalistic integrity, A.S. Liebling, warned nearly 40 years ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."


Did the Library of Congress Just Follow GeekDad's Lead?
If you still haven't started A Princess of Mars, this is a really great clean copy of a first edition. And if you are done reading A Princess of Mars, you might look at the other novels highlighted in our 102 Essential Science Fiction Books For Your Kindle post. (You can find most of these for the Nook as well.) Either way, we will see you here in a couple of weeks for our book discussion.


Image: Autonomous Solutions Inc.,/CNH Industrial/Case IH.
Agricultural equipment manufacturer Case IH, a unit of CNH Industrial, just unveiled a seriously intimidating-looking tractor at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa. Called the Autonomous Concept Vehicle, the robotic tractor can be programmed using a tablet computer.
This futuristic piece of agricultural equipment is drawing crowds at the annual Iowa farm show, and for good reason. Unlike conventional tractors, it has no cabin for a driver. Instead, it utilizes cameras, radar, and GPS, which allows farmers to remotely control and monitor the machine with an app on a tablet computer. The machine can operate day or night and is designed to plant seeds and harvest crops, among other tasks.
Path planning technology developed by Case IH will allow farmers to manage their fields and oversee the overall operation of multiple vehicles simultaneously. The ACV is also capable of obstacle detection to prevent mishaps.
After the farmer triggers a command, the autonomous tractor can drive from a parking area along a private road to a field where it can commence its agricultural duties without any further human intervention. The tractor is also designed such that it can work in tandem with manned machinery.
The machine boasts a 419-horsepower engine and clocks a maximum speed of 31 mph (50 km/hr). It’s not known how much it costs to build the tractor, or its intended retail price.
As cool as this machine looks, it’s not immediately clear when it’ll finally make an appearance on an actual farm. As reported in Bloomberg, the concept vehicle still faces legal hurdles before it can go on sale. There’s concern, for example, about the legalities of having the tractor cross a publicly accessible road as it moves from one field to another. Experts say it could take years before these sorts of legal details are ironed out.


Regulators often struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of new technologies which hurts businesses and consumers.
Whether it’s a cutting-edge gadget, an exciting software platform, or an advanced appliance, the latest technologies to hit the market can create a consumer and business buying frenzy. They can fully meet with expectations and they can turn out to be a passing fad, but on occasion, they can also present possible dangers, particularly if they bypass strict health and safety regulations for the country in which they are being sold.
Where technology is concerned, the speed of development is rapid. Consumers are reliant on manufacturers to work within product safety guidelines and they trust them to do that before bringing a product to market. However, we have all heard the horror stories when technology goes wrong and in an effort to apply exemplary customer relationship management, each stage in the supply chain from retailers and distributors through to manufacturers becomes involved in a highly visible, sometimes damaging product recall.
One of the issues with fast moving tech innovation is that regulations can struggle to keep up. Drones, for example, are frequently used for surveillance purposes and like any other surveillance camera system, their use is governed by data protection legislation. The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) come into force next May, which will have a significant impact on the use of drones for capturing data, and puts pressure on operators to comply. However, according to the latest information from the Surveillance Camera Commissioner, clear guidance is not yet available and is still being worked on, which means operators are left in doubt as to exactly how GDPR will impact them.
Any regulatory uncertainty, whether related to drones, wearables, software, operating platforms or kids’ tech toys, could lead to legal action if the technology is at all defective, potentially law breaking, or carries inadequate warning labels. The potential for recalls, therefore, remains as murky as the laws themselves, but manufacturers must prepare for the likelihood of regulations becoming more stringent and possible pitfalls that could result in brand damage.
An area of technology that is currently gaining interest is low-code and no-code platforms for straightforward app development. According to a 2016 Gartner report, the market will be worth $15 billion by 2020, and these platforms are being embraced by organisations who want to rapidly develop their own apps, against their own business process needs and at low cost. Indeed, we have embraced a no-code platform ourselves in order to build flexible apps for each recall project we handle on behalf of a client, linked directly to our telecoms network. We know from experience that this has had a significant and positive impact on our own CRM system, and added business value. However, whilst most enterprise low and no-code platforms automatically facilitate any industry specific regulations and compliance, there is a danger that the creation of multiple apps that are not processed through IT departments, will lead to a lack of approved security protocols and over time will not be compliant or meet with necessary regulations.
Understandably, if a manufacturer or any other stakeholder hits upon a product or development that takes the world by storm, they want to make the most of it, so if it falls between regulatory gaps, which often happens with medical devices such as health trackers and wearables, or is simply so innovative that regulations have not kept up, preparation is paramount.
Even with the most intensive testing procedures, products can slip through the net because of defects or because safety is not being met, as in the case of US pacemakers currently being withdrawn over concerns the devices’ software could be hacked. If this happens, and consumer complaints arise, it is important to investigate them fully. If a product recall is deemed necessary, this can have a long-term impact on a brand, not only from a financial perspective, but also in terms of reputation and customer loyalty.
In this situation, it’s helpful to plan ahead and outline a product retrieval programme that can inform every stage in the supply chain. Third party recall partners can be on stand-by to help, but there is also no substitute for a contingency plan before an issue arises. A mock recall can be a useful way to test how well a company is equipped to handle a sudden recall situation.
If the product is one that sells through traditional retail channels, the primary objective must be to retrieve all affected products from shops or eCommerce websites and from the warehouse. Ideally, a field force should be used to pull products off shelves, or directly from consumers’ homes for testing. In addition, to prevent non-affected products from the same manufacturer also being wiped from shelves, it is necessary to work closely with retailers, or implement a field team that can visit distributors and retailers in person, which will help to ensure the focus is only on the affected product.
When it comes to putting things right, companies must understand the requirements of multiple regulatory bodies – both within and between countries. These rules govern not only the production and sale of the product, but also transportation, storage, and disposal in the event of a recall. If a new smartphone, or tablet for example, is found to be faulty, the regulations regarding retrieval and testing across many different territories must be taken into account.
Notifying customers during a recall is vital. Specialist contact centres can be set up, confidential data registries established and a multichannel approach taken, which allows important safety and recall messages to reach the maximum number of people, particularly over social media.
Recall plans can help to quickly locate recalled products and remove them from the marketplace and out of harms way. This can mitigate the financial, legal and brand reputational risks and even increase customer loyalty. The more popular a product, the more consumer, media, and regulatory scrutiny it is likely to receive, so it is crucial that companies understand the implications, adapt as regulations evolve, prevent crises with proactive risk assessments and take action should these rules ultimately result in a recall. Technology is moving at break-neck speed, so manufacturers and developers need to be sure they can keep up if things don’t go according to plan.


Posted by Barb ( on October 19, 2005. Brought to you by Citysearch.
Posted by Renee W on May 23, 2005. Brought to you by Citysearch.
Valley Veterinary Clinic is a Veterinarians facility at 26072 Highway 30 in Rainier, OR.


At the Bhubaneshwar Art Trail, curated by the brilliant Jagannath Panda and the enigmatic Premjish Achari, we have a French and an American artist presenting a unique and engaging dialogue between representation and abstraction. Both artists create works that draw our gaze inward as their installations speak of elegance and enigma even as they create a new signature in the dialectics of the environment and the large theories that are ingrained in us.
Tucked away on the terrace of an abandoned temple in Bhubaneswar with the sound of ducks quacking, the sculptural installation looks as if it’s an extension of an old tree. Brooklyn artist Markus Baenziger’s green leaves created by fabric and wire is a veritable treat and it speaks to us about the power of minimalism and the elegance of creating a work that can speak of itself even as it echoes an ecological evanescence amidst its own grace-filled gravitas.
Baenziger’s sculptures in the past have integrated his love of nature with his immersion in a gritty, imperfect and industrialised world. His installation at a tangential angle makes us gaze at the light that distills itself. “This installation is inspired by the simple beauty found in nature. A play of shadows, cast on the ground by the sunlight, is traced and materialised into a sculpture. It is a universal image that translates across geographic and cultural boundaries. As a new visitor to this culture, I present it as a shared experience and reflection on a shared environment. I am drawn to its ephemeral quality,” says the artist.
Approaching the work from a distance, one realises that these naturally rendered forms are actually made of a simple fabric that is thin and lets the light in, perhaps in a veiled fashion. The work calls attention to the continuum between decay and new growth, neglect and care, even as it dwells on the power and language of craftsmanship. Baenziger is a veritable master both in design and attention to detail. He has the capacity and experience to produce works that appear both familiar and emblematic of larger forces of nature both man-made and otherwise.
On a raised mound opposite the Bindusagar sat French artist Cécile Beau’s fish with scales. From a distance it looked like bronze, but on closer proximity it was evident that it was made from hundreds of tiny terracotta diyas. Cecile has been primarily interested in the notion of territory or landscape as mental appropriation of a place, as a tool to reach somewhere beyond the visible. Landscapes from which all human presence has disappeared or where it has perhaps never existed make these works austere.
While each tiny terracotta diya offered so many stories, there were also sensory experiences that spoke of multiple universes, both realistic as well as imaginary. But it’s a combination of poetic, fictional, mythic and zoological place in the environment that added to the magic and caprice of this installation. In the past in her travels and works around the world, Cecil has used vegetable/ mineral materials and given mysterious titles borrowed from foreign languages to add to the richness of her narratives. At once the fish (matsya) becomes both hybrid and enigmatic as it generates a seraphic atmosphere.
As artists of deeper depths and sensibilities, both Cécile Beau and Markus Beanziger propose an aesthetic between life and art, between the environment and composite objects to generate conversation. Their creativity straddles different worlds but presents us with the truth that installations must weave local dimensions in time with a mapping of materials that power the dynamics of the past and the present.
The Bhubaneshwar Art Trail was inaugurated by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on November 18 and runs for the entire month.
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It’s been 50 years since the world’s longest surviving kidney transplant patient had his operation.
Harry Turner, now 70, has smashed life expectancy rates after he was predicted to only live a further 16 years.
He had received a kidney from older brother Victor in 1969.
Sadly Victor passed away when he was just 39 from a heart attack but Harry said he would always be grateful to his sibling.
Harry said: ‘I was 20 when I had my transplant.
‘My two kidneys had packed up and were diseased. My weight had gone up to almost 20 stone because I was full of fluid.
‘My brother, Victor, kindly gave me his kidney and it has worked ever since..
Grandfather-of-three Harry, who worked in construction until I was 58, said the transplant allowed him to live a full life.
He still has to go for check-ups but is doing well.
Harry has been honoured with an NHS award after surviving for so long and he took the opportunity to thank Preston Hospital for his treatment.
He added: ‘I’m so lucky to have reached 50 years with my transplant, you can only hope that it would last so long.
Staff at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust organised a special event to celebrate the milestone at the hospital.
At the event the team presented Harry with a plaque created by fellow transplant patient Robin Sharples and his friend Jim Cooper.
Mark Brady, clinical director for renal medicine at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, said: ‘We cannot find any record of an older transplanted kidney worldwide.
Register to be an organ donor here.


A Somerset County man convicted of stealing electric utility wires with his wife was sentenced to serve three years in jail by an Accomack County judge.
Darek Snyder, 37, and his wife, Amanda Grover-Snyder, both of Westover, had both pleaded guilty to theft of copper wires from A&N electric company’s power lines in Accomack and Northampton counties between July and October last year.
The pair was caught in October last year and made full confessions to the police after their arrest.
Both admitted they were addicted to heroin and were selling the wire to make money to support their habits.
Snyder has a lengthy criminal history, mostly involving the theft of electrical wire, said Commonwealth’s Attorney Spencer Morgan.
On the witness stand at his April 11 sentencing, Snyder testified about the couple’s long history of drug abuse.
He said their two-year-long heroin habit “cost $40 or $50 a day” in the beginning, then escalated to $200 to $300 a day by the time they were arrested.
“I started young with weed, then cocaine and then painkillers after hurting myself on the job,” he told the court. He said they stole the wire to sell it for heroin.
Snyder said he and his wife have four children ages 18, 14, 11 and 9, who have been in the care of his mother since their arrest six months ago.
He told a story of overdosing on heroin in Richmond last summer. He said he blacked out and Narcan was used to save his life. When his wife picked him up, he said, they used heroin again.
“Both of us knew we had to stop,” he told the court. He said he knew he would either be arrested or dead. He asked to be allowed to attend the CCAP or community corrections alternative program for which he was found eligible.
He said Snyder had convictions for stealing metal in both Somerset County and Montgomery County in Maryland.
He asked that his client be given the opportunity to attend CCAP.
Amanda Grover-Snyder had only a DUI on her record and was sentenced to a year in jail and then to the 42 to 48 month CCAP program and ordered to pay $23,710.25, her share of the restitution, by the end of 2031. She has also received a similar sentence for the thefts in Northampton County.
Lewis ordered Snyder to spend three years in prison, with 21 years suspended, rather than to the CCAP program he requested.
“When you complete serving your time, you will be on probation and must be of good behavior for 10 years,” the judge said.
He also ordered Snyder to pay restitution in the amount of $23,710.25 by the end of 2031. He will be sentenced for the Northampton County wire thefts next month.